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THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OP SLAVERY; 



OR, 



THE INSTITUTION CONSIDERED 



117 REGARD 



TO ITS INFLUENCE ON PUBLIC WEALTH AND THE GENERAL WELFARE. 



Br 



EDMUND RUFFIN, OF VIRGINIA. 



Printed bj Lemuel Towera, 






C^ b <.J ** ■ 



THE POLITICAL ECOIOMY OF SLAVERY; 



THE INSTITUTION CONSIDERED IN REGARD TO ITS INFLUENCE 
ON PUBLIC WEALTH AND THE GENERAL WELFARE. 



BY EDMUND KUFFIN, OF VIRGINIA. 



Slavery fjeneral in Ancient times — Caiixes of 
Slavery — Aversion to labor of degraded 
classes and of barbarous communities. 

Slavery has existed from as early time as 
historical records furnish any information of 
the social and political condition of mankind. 
There was no country, in the most ancient 
time of its history, of which the peo[)le had 
made any cons^iderable advances in industry 
or retinenieut, in which slaveiy had not been 
previously and long established, and in general 
use. The reasons for this universal earl}- ex- 
istence of slavery, and of domestic or indi- 
vidual slavery, (except among the most igno- 
rant and savage tribes,) can be readily deduced 
from the early conditions of societj*. 

Whether in savage or civilized life, the low- 
er tiiat individuals are degraded b}' poverty 
and want, and the fewer are their- means for 
comfort, and the enjoyment of either intellec- 
tual or- physical pleasures, or of relief from 
physical sufferings, the lower do they descend 
in their appreciation of actual and even natu- 
ral wants; and the more do they magnify and 
dread the elforts and labors necessary to 
protect themselves against the occurrence of 
the privations and sufferings with which they 
are threatened. When man sinks so low lu 
not to feel artificial wants, or utterh* to dis- 
pair of gratifying any such wants, he becomes 
brutishly eareless and indolent, even in pro- 
viding for natural and ph3'sical wants, upon 
which provi:5ion even life is dependent. All 



lized and plentiful, and even generally indus- 
trious country, there are to be found, in the 
lowest grade of free inhabitants, many indi- 
viduals, families, and communities of many 
families, who live in the most abject conditioa 
of poverty and privation in which life can be 
preserved, (and is not alfi'ays preserved,) and 
prefer such wretelied existence to the alterna- 
tive of stead}- labor, by which they might 
greatly improve their condition, if not relieve 
:ill wants for the necessaries of life. Even in 
countries, and among a general population, in 
which the hiirhest rewards are held out for la- 
bor and industry — where some intellectual, 
and also moral and religious instruction, are 
within the I'eaeh of all who will seek and ac- 
cept such benefits, there are numerous cases 
of men who not only forego all intellectual 
and moral improvement for themselves and 
their families, and the attempt to gratify all 
artificial wants, but who also neglect the relief 
of the most humble comforts and even neces- 
saries of life, rather ttian resort to that regu- 
lar course of labor wiiich would furnish the 
means for comfortable subsistence. In all such 
cases — whether in civilized or in savage socie- 
t}-, or whether in regard to individuals, fami- 
lies in successive generations, or to more ex- 
tended communities — a good an<l proper reme- 
dy for this evil, if it could be applied, would 
be the enslaving of these reckless, wretched 
drones and eumberers of the earih, and there- 
by compelling them to habits of labor, and in 
return satisfying their wants for necessaries. 



such j)ersons soon learn to regard present and and raising them and their progeny in the scale 
continuous labor as an evil greater than the I of liutHanity, not only phy^ieally, but morally 
probable but uncertain future occurrence of land intellectually. Such amensure would bethe 
extreme privation, or even famine, and conse- most beneficial in young or rude conununities, 
quent death from want. . Hence the most sav- where labor is scai'ce and dear, and the means 
age tribes of tropical regions rtre content to for subsistence easy to obtain. For even 
rely for sustenance almost entirely on the nat- among a barbarous people, wi.ere the aversion 
ural i>roductions of a fertile and bodnteous to labor is universal, those who could not be 
soil. The savage inhabitants of less fruitful | induced to hiborwith their own hands, and in 
lands, and under more rigorous climates, de I person, if they became slaveholders, would 



pend on huntisg and fishing for a preeariou.- 
eupport, and with irregular alternations of 
abundance and lavish waste, with destitution 
and hunger and famine. And in every civi- 



be ready enough to compel the labor of their 
slaves, and also W(Mild soon learn to economize 
an<l aceutnulate the products of their labor. 
Hence, among any savage people, the intro* 



AiUction and establishment of domestic slavery 
is necessarily an improvement of the condition 
and wealth and well-being of the community 
in general, and also of the comfort of the en- 
slaved class, if it had consisted of such persons 
as were lowest in the social scale — and is bene- 
ficial in every such case to the master class, 
and to the community in general. 

Indolence of free laborers at liigh wages — Dif- 
ferent hicenfives to free and dave labor — 

Comparative values. < 

But the disposition to indulge indolence 
(even at great sacrifices of benefit which might 
be secured by industrious labor) is not pecu- 
liar to tlie lowest and most degi-aded classes of 
civilized communities. It is notorious that, 
■whenever ihe demand for labor is much great- 
er than the supply, or tlie wages of labor are 
much higher than the expenses of living, verj' 
many, even of t!ie ordinary laboring class, 
are remarkable for indolence, and work no 
more than compelled by necessity. The great- 
er the demand, and the liigher the rewards, 
for labor, the less will be performed, as a gene- 
ral rule, by each individual laborer. If the 
wages of work for one day will support the 
laborer or meclianic and his family for three, 
it will be very likely that he will be idle two- 
third-! of liis time. 

Slave labor, in each individual case, and for 
each small measure of time, is more slow and 
inefficient than the labor of a free man. The 
latter knows that the more work he performs 
in a shoi't time, the greater will be his reward 
in earnings. Hence, he has every inducement 
to exert himself while at work for himself, 
even though he maj' be idle for a longer time af 
terwards. The slave receives the same sup- 
port, in food, clothing, and other allowances, 
whether he works much or little ; and hence 
he has every inducement to spare himself as 
much as jxtssible, and to do as little work as 
he can, without drawing on liimself punish- 
ment, which is the only incentive to slave la- 
bor. It is, then, an unquestionable general 
truth, that the labor of a free man, for any 
stated tiirie, is more than the labor of a slave, 
and if at the same cost, would be cheaper to 
the employer. Hence it has been inferred, and 
asserted by all who argue against slavery, and 
is often admitted even by those who would 
defend its expediencj', that, as a general rule, 
and foi" whole communities, free labor is cheap- 
er than slave labor. The rule is false, and the 
exceptions only are true. Suppose it admit- 
ted that the labor of slaves, for each hour or 
day, will amount to but two-thirds of what 
hired free laboi'crs would perform in the same 
time. But the slave labor is continuous, and 
every day at. least it returns to the employers 
and to the community, this two-thirds of full 
labor. Free laborers, if to be hired for the 
like duties would require at least double the 
amount of wages to perform one-third more 
labor in each day, and in general, would be 
idle and earning nothing, more length of time 
than that spent in labor. Then, on these prem- 
ises and sujipositions, it is manifest that slave 
labor, with its admitted defect in this respect. 



will be cheapest and most profitable to the em- 
ployer, and to the whole community, and will 
yield mcJre towards the general increase of 
production and public wealth ; and that the 
free laborer who is idle two days out of three, 
even if receiving double wages for his days 
of labor, is less laborious, and less productive 
for himself, and for the community, and the 
public wealth, than the slave. 

The mistake of those who maintain, or ad- 
mit, this generally asserted proposition, that 
"free labor is cheaper than slave labor," is 
caused by assuming as true, that self-interest 
induces free hirelings to labor continuously 
and regularly. This is never the case in gene- 
ral, except where daily and continuous labor 
is required to obtain a bare daily subsistence. 
That case, and its consequences, will be con- 
sidered hereafter. For the present, I will re- 
turn to the causes of slavery. 

War formerly a source and producer of slavery. 

Though slavery would, in the manner above 
stated, have been introduced (if not otherwise) 
among every savage people above the lowest 
and least improvable condition of the savage 
state, still the institution generally preceded, 
and so prevented, the existence of these condi- 
tions. For there were other still earlier and 
sufficiently operative causes. As soon as men 
outgrew and emerged from strictly patriarchal 
or pure f; mily government, (the most ancient 
of all,) aid were included in larger communi- 
ties, under governments of usurpation and 
force, it must be supposed that the strong 
ruled and oppressed the weak, whether acting 
or acted upon as individuals or as communi- 
ties, and in that manner that tlie weaker 
would become slaves to the stronger. If not 
produced otherwise, this would necessarily be 
the result of war between semi-barbarous 
communities; and war has existed between 
such communities, and has rarely ceased, since 
men were first arrayed in different political 
bodies. Where civilization and refinement 
were so low as among the most ignorant sava- 
ges of Australia, or most of the North Ameri- 
can Indians, the prisoners of war would be 
put to death, because no profitable use could 
be made of them. But where any advances 
had been made in regular industry, and espe- 
cially where the right of private property in 
land had been established, the expediency of 
making domestic slaves and laborers of prison- 
ers of war would soon be acknowledged and 
acted upon. Thus one of the eailiest effects 
of the institution of slavery would be to lessen 
the horrors of war by saving lives that would 
otherwise be sacrificed. . 

Slavery imposed as penalty for crime or debt. 
In the early conditions of society and of 
private property, most of the debtors to indi- 
viduals, or to the sovereign, or delinquents 
whose punishments were pecuniary or pro- 
perty amercements, would rarely have anj 
other property or means for payment than 
their own persons. Hence would certainly 
follow (as still is the usage in barbarous coun- 
tries) slavery as the payment for debt, and 



penalty for crimes, or offences against thesove 
reign or tlie laws. With the injustice and 
cruelty usual in all barbarous communities 



therefore this would be slavery of the most 
objectionable kind. It would involve most 



slavery would also be enslnr^^ a„^ .•/..: . ."^ '* "o^^ difficult for the masters to com- 



, _- "-"■■■-lucwuj. Liius uuiiuemnea to 

Slavery would also be enslaved. And if this 
were not ordered by vengeance and cruelty 
H would almost surely be required bvexpedi' 
^cy, and even humanity. For the destittte 
wife and voung children of a slave, and any 
tuture and more helpless infants, would gene 
rally need to be supported, or would perish 
from want In barbarous communities regu- 
lar maintenance in such eases can only be Imd 
m a master who can afford to support in 
tant and then unprofitable slaves, to be com- 
pensated by the subsequent labors of their 
mature life and profitable service. Thus 
slavery would necessarily, and from the begin^ 
ning. become hereditary, and be everywhere 
a permanent and fixed condition 



mand and enforce obedience-and would make 
the bonds of servitude more galling to the 
slaves, because of their being equal to their 
masters (and, in many individual cases, greatly 
superior,) m natural endowments of mind. 
The greatest works of ancient nations due to 
slavery, and in its worst fonn. 

from a mas^irwii^^c;;; affo;d'u.r^pSjt'r|kiS^of 7z:^'^::tnf rf^ 

fantand then unprofitable «,.... JV^^l luea of the sLiera^'^^S" their ^mit:^1 

served ^ the foundation and the essential fir&fc 
cause of all the civilization and refinement 
and improvement of arts and learning, that disl 
mguished the oldest nations. Except where 
he special Providence and care of God mav 
have interposed to guard a j.articular family 
aiKl Its descendants, there was nothing but the 
By the two modes above stated BlayevxUuff^ of slavery to prevent any race or 
would necessarily be established nVeearh herS'". V'l^^ "' "^'"''^ from sinking into 
state of society of every young and bai bZ ,' T^^ barbarism. And no people could 

community wlich was'Ut so^savage as ^I^: :;iS;o^r'H^""-?"''i'''^"^ '^'''' low Condition 
destitute of all regular industry fnd ot" the I . K *" ^'-^ and operation of slavery, 
artificial wants which induce a deinand for or 1 ' ^Z'"?" individuals of the community 

the desire to possess, the lLuZ\^tJ\:,'V^^^^^^^ 



Where personal slavery is not needed, and if 
previously established would cease to exist 



the desire to possess, the accumulated pro 

Bu^h/i ^'^S ''''Y''"'' *''« existence^ of 
Buch a demand for the services of slaves as 
wil induce and compensate the providing for 

.laveVv^' 'f'/^ ?'^^'""^ support, domestic 
•lavery cannot be begun. And if before ex- 

S:.rsdrp::;ied';i;:rfthf s" "^'^^t- p^^^^- ^'-- -«--. 

slave will ifeSe t:i f L "t nr;: ll X^Vt^ '''' l^^ ^-"^ - -«- -<1 could be 
free man, driven to his greatest exer on bv ^^^ *° '"'^. ^''^^ ^«''^'«- ^"^ to the 

extreme want, and depressed by th^ comoeti """ '""'; T"' ^."'' """^ ^^'^^ the later and faj 
tioa of his fellows to the lowest rae of wK" "f P^''^^\f "^ admirable works of art S 
at which subsistence is possible ^'!''''/"*^,.^^«r' ^"* ^^'^ *'»« marvellous 

Th. evils and benefits of slavery stated ,.« J "'fS^'^fl^S^^r ll^vl!;?? "TS^ 
., , '■«^^f- ''"'y ^^'-e gt-eat works of utility and orna- 



munity being enslaved, by conquest and sub- 
J ligation, in some form, to a foreign and more 
enlightened people. The very ancient and 
wonderful works of construction and sculp- 
ture in Lgypt and Hindostan could nevar 
I'ave been executed, nor even the desire to 
possess them conceived, except where compul- 
sory labor mr) ^r^^^ K.. — .• . . , , f. 



J. ^„„,j ^,,g consequence 

general results were highly beneficial By 
this means on y— the comnnl^mn ^f a T--^ 
slaves—;,, ti./ compuiMon of domestic 

„ i^ 7i V^ *''^'''>' conditions of society 
^_uld_ labor be u,ade to produce wealth & 
Uus aid only could leisure be afforded to thi 
master class to cultivate mental improvement 
and rehnernent of manners; and artificial 

.Trm" lau ZTf- "^' i"^'"^"^'^ whic?;would 
•timula e the desire and produce the effect to 
accumulate the products of labor, whicl alone 
constitute private and public wedlh To t e 
^eration and first results of domestic slavcn 
were due the gradual civilization and gene.S 
improvement of manners and of arte amonJ 

?uLatedTo r' Y''% .<="'"'I"«'-ed and sub- 
?4tene.l n'" rr^ politically) by a more en- 
fern h i^ -P^"' ''•'^y' subsequently emerged 
'rom barbarism and dark 



,■ ] ^. , ' -- — " "" ""'^ iiiStitution 

of domestic slavery that was erected the ad- 
mirable an.l benificent mastership and govern- 
ment of the patriarch Abraham, who owned 
so many domestic slaves that he could sud- 
denly call out and lead three hundred and 
eighteen of them, able to bear arms, to repel ' 
and punish the invasion of foreign hostile 
tubes. Ihe hke system of domestic slavery 
then, and for many ages after, subsisted ii 
every part of the world in which any consid- 
erable moral or mental progress or economical 
improvement was to be seen. 

I^Mls of ancient slavery, and its great extnisiem 

and abuse, and relief of ered by another kind 

The institution of slavery in ancient times. 

with :ts great benefits, had also its great evilZ 

an.l not only m its first establishment, hut 'm 



gr. 



sessarj 



numbers, and no small proportion of them 
were of captive barbarian and warlike ene- 
mies. These conditions were necessary causes 
of weakness of the master class, and of the 
general community, and helped to invite and 
to aid the success of the hordes of barbarian 
invaders that swept over the then civilized 
world like a deluge, and, for ages afterwards, 
buried Europe under dark ignorance and bar- 
barian rule. Still, slow-growing, yet complete, 
final relief, sprang from the same cause — 
slavery — that had produced the former civili- 
zation. In one or other form, whether of the 
general and political slavery of a people, (as 

• of the conquered to their conquerors,) or of 

• class to class, or of serflom, villenage, or 
.slavery to the soil, or of personal slavery, this 
•institution was universal during the dark and 
. eemi-barbarous middle ages of Europe. And 

in the beginning it was from the slaves made 
of the enlightened and refined, but effeminate 
■.and cowardly former masters of the lands, 
that the hitter civilization first began, and 
was communicated to their barbarous con- 
.querors and their masters. Thus, and a*n- 
■trary to the general order of things in this 
.case, the enslaved, and not the master class, 
was the source of improvement to the other. 
To this cause it was owing that the revival of 
■civilization and learning in Europe occurred 
centuries earlier than would have been the 
case if the slaves, after the complete con- 
quests made by barbarians, had been as igno- 
rrant as their masters. 

The extinction of individual slavery the neces- 
sary result of an excess of free labor — The 
competition of free laborers, and their great- 
est sufferings, produce the greatest profits of 
capital. 

But in every country, when covered by a 

■ dense ptpulation, and when subsistence to free 
laborers becomes difiicult to be obtained, the 
competition for emploj'ment will tend to 

■ depress tlie price of labor, gradually, to the 
lowest rate at which a bare subsistence can 
be purchased. The indolence natural to man, 
and especially in his lowest and most degra- 

•ded state, can then no longer l)e indulged; 
because to be idle would not he to sutt'er [)ri- 
vation only, and to incur risks of greater suf- 
fering, but absolutely and speedily to starve 
and die of want. If domestic slavery could 
have contiiuied to exist so long, the slaves 
■then would be in a very nmch better condi- 
"tion than the free laborers, because possessing 
assured means for support, and that for much 
less labor and hardship. For sharp want, 
hunger and cold, are more effective incentives 
to labor than the slaveowner's whip, even if 
its use is not restrained by any feeling of jus- 
tice or merc3% But under such conditions of 
free labor, domestic or individual slavei'y 
could not exist. For whenever want and 
competition shall reduce the wages of free 
labor below the cost of slave labor, then it 
will be more profitable for the slaveowner 
and employer to hire free labor (both cheap- 
ened and driven by hunger and misery) than 
to maintain slaves, and compel their labor less 



effectually and at greater expense. Under 
such conditions, slaves (if they could not be 
sold and removed to some other country, 
where needed) would be readily emancipated 
by masters to whom they had become bur- 
densome. Soon, under the operating influ- 
ence of self-interest alone on the master class^ 
Jwnestic slavery would come to an end of 
itself — give place to the far more stringent 
and oppressive rule of want, as a compeller 
of labor, and be substituted by class-slavery, 
or the absolute subjection of the whole class 
of laborers to the whole class of employers — 
or of labor to capital. * Then, in the progress 
of society, first begins to be true, and soon 
becomes entirely true, the haeknej'ed propo- 
sition that " free labor is cheaper than slave 
labor;" and it is only true under these cir- 
cumstances, when the supply of labor is regu- 
larly or generally greater than the demand. 
Then the surplus hands must be left without 
emploj'ment, and tlierefore without means for 
subsistence. They can obtain employment 
only by under-bidding the rate of wages then 
received by the laborers employed, and so be 
engaged by throwing as many other laborers 
out of work. These must, in like manner, 
submit to the same reduction of wages, to be 
enabled again to obtain employment by get- 
ting the places of as many others. Finally, 
ail are compelled to woik for the reduced wages. 
But, after this general reduction, still, as 
before, the supply of hands will exceed (and 
more and nioi-e Avith the increase of popula- 
tion) tlie demand for their labor; as many 
therefore as are surplus must be alwaj's out of 
employment, and struggling to olMain it — and 
by the same process, competition, lu'ged by ex- 
treme want, will tend still more to lower wages. 
Thus want and competition will continue to 
compel the superfluous and unemployed hands 
to submit to more and more reduction of 
wages, until the amount generally obtained 
is very much less than what is needed for the 
comfortable subsistence and healthy support 
of tlie laborer. And during all the time of 
this long continued competition and struggle 
for subsistence, while the rate of wages is 
being gradually lowered, the amount of toil 
of each laboier is increased — or at least as long 
as the human frame can bear increased exer- 
tion. When the greatest possible amount of 
labor is thus obtained for the lowest aviount of 
wages that can barely sustain life and strength 
for labor, there has been attained tlie most per- 
fect and profitable eondilion of industrial 
operations for the class of capitalists and em' 
'ployers, and also for the most rap/ul increase 
of general and national wealth. But these 
benefits (so much lauded and deemed so desi- 
rable for every country, and by almost every 
writer,) are purchased" only by the greatest 
possible amount of toil, privation, and misery 
of the class of laborers under which they can 
live and work. It is readily admitted that 
slave labor could never yield anything like 
such large net returns — and that it would not 
only prttduce less, but would cost more. 
Slaves could not be subjected to such extreme 
privation and misery, because they must be 



fed and clotlied, and cannot generallj' be 
greatly over- worked, (and never to the profit 
of the master,) as is caused continually' by 
the pressure of extreme want, and through 
competition, on free laborers. If the political 
and economical pioblem to be worked out is 
the production of the greatest amount of 
profit to capitalists, and of wealth to the 
nation, in a country of dense population and 
advanced industrial operations, witliout re- 
gard to the sulferings of the laboring class, it 
is certain that the Iai)orers must not be slaves, 
but free from all masters except extreme 
want. England, after the general abolition of 
slavery, was more than two centuries ap- 
proaching this condition, which was fiuall}' 
reached, and has now been fully enjoyed for 
many j-ears. Since then, England has been, 
of all the countries of the woild, the most 
prosperous in manufactures, commerce, and 
all industrial employments of capital and 
labor — and the laboring and poorest classes 
have been among the most destitute and mis- 
erable. That they have not been sunk, by 
competition for food, to still greater misery, 
and that many more numerous and frequent 
deaths have not occurred from absolute starv- 
ation, is owing to the introduction and pro- 
tection of another kind of slavery — paupei' 
slavery — which is the certain consequence of, 
ferings produced by the competition of free 
and the pm-tial remedy for, the evils and suf- 
labor. 

Pauper slavery. 

Thougli, after the supply of labor in any 
country has long exceeded the demand, com- 

Setition for employment will, necessarily, re- 
uce wages to as little as will serve to main- 
tain life under great suffering — yet wages 
cannot be reduced any lower, at least to the 
further profit of the whole class of capitalists 
or employers. For, Avhen laborers can no 
longer subsist on their wages, tlie deficiency 
must in some way be supplied l)y the property 
owners. In lawless or badly governed coun- 
tries, beggary and theft may be the irregular 
means of drawing that support from property 
which was denied in wages. In better regu- 
lated communities, the supply is furnished by 
the " poor law," or a compulsory provision for 
the laboring poor who cannot subsist on their 
wages, as wtll as for the infirm poor, incapa- 
ble of labor. This system is most extensive 
and complete in England, and is the necessary 
result of the competition for employment of 
free laborers — of England's great and boasted 
•uccess in all industrial pursuits and profitable 
•cnployment of labor by capital. And thus 
it IS, that the cruel oppi'cssion by capital, in 
reducing wages to the lowest rate, is avenged 
by the tax levied by and for tlic j)oor, equal 
to the deficiency of wages for the amount 
necessary for bare subsistence. And to this 
relief, which the poor law promises and affords, 
•rery day-laborer in England looks forward 
fis the almost certain destiny and last resource 
«f himself and his family. There are but few of 
that class who do not, at some time, have to 
rwort to support by the parish; and every 



English laborer has more reason to expect to 
die a ])arish-suj)ported pauper, than other- 
wise. 

But this aid held out to pauperism,. wretch- 
ed as it is, serves to encourage improvidence, 
and to increase, as much as to relieve extreme 
want. The pauper laborer, supported by the 
compulsory and reluctant charity of his parish, 
is but a little better off than those who perish 
elsewhere for want of such pruxision. But 
it is not my purpose to consider the system in 
either of these aspects, but in anotlier. The 
pauper, whether laborer or otherwise, receiv- 
ing su[)port from the parish, is neither more 
nor less than a slave to the administrators of 
the law and dispensers of the public charity. 
The pauper ceases to be a free agent in any 
respect. If at work far from tlie ]>lace of his 
birth, (in England,) he is remanded and trans- 
ported to his own or native iiarisli, there to 
obt^iin support. If either this forced exile 
from his long previous place of residence and 
labor, or other reasons of expediency require 
it, husband and wife, and parents and chil- 
dren, are separated, and severally disposed of 
at the will of the overseers of the poor. The 
able-bodied laborer, who at his agricultural 
or other work can earn but six shillings a 
week, and cannot support his family for less 
than ten, may, indeed, obtain the deficient four 
shillings from the jiarish. But to do so, he is 
subject to be forced to take any service that 
the authorities may direct. And as the em- 
ployer receives the pauper laborer against his 
will, and only because he thereby pays so 
much of his share of the poor-tax, he not 
only has the pauper as an in voluntary slave, 
but he has not even the inducement of self- 
interest to treat the pauper slave wt-ll, or to 
care to preserve his health or life. The death 
of the pauper laborer is no loss to his tem- 
porary employer, and is a clear gain to the 
parish. Hence, while all of the millions of 
pauper population of England are truly slaves, 
and as much under constraint as if each one 
and his family belonged to an individual mas- 
ter, or as negro slaves are here, tluy have not 
the family comforts, or the care for the pre- 
servation of their health and lives, enjoyed by 
every negro slave in Virginia or Mississippi. 
The negro slaves in the United States have 
increased from 300,OuO, the number originally 
imported from Africa, to nearly 4,000,000, or 
more than twelve for one. This is a sufficient 
evidence of their general good treatment, in- 
duccd by the self-interest of the owners. If 
it were possible to designate, sepiuately, the 
whole class of poor laborers in England, and 
to trace them and their descendants (or two 
hundred years, it is most probable that the 
original number would be found diminished 
in as great proportion as that in which our 
negro slaves have increased — or reduced to 
less than one-twelfth part. Yet this wide- 
spread, miserable, and life-destroying hunger 
slavery and pauper slavery in England is there 
called freedom by the fanatics and .-o-called 
philanthropists, who abhor, and c;dl inces- 
santly for God's vengeance upon, the negro 
slavery of this country 1 



s 



Evils caused to the former serfs and to the com- 
munity^ by their emancipation. 

Such are the present conditions of things, 
and the relations of labor and capital in Eng- 
land, especially — and also to great extent in 
France, and the other most populous and rich- 
est countries of the civilized world. When 
these latter conditions (usually understood to 
be evidences of the highest state of national 
prosperity) were first in progress, and were 
extended, personal slavery rapidly disappear- 
ed. It had formerly been general in some 
form in every part of Europe. It now only 
remains as serfdom in the Russian and Aus- 
trian dominions, and some other of the least 
improved portions of Europe. 

When the slaves or serfs of Europe were 
left free, their masters were relieved from 
what was then comparatively a burden, be- 
cause they were able to hire cheaper free 
labor. But the former slaves suffered from 
the change more than their former masters 
gained. All of them were necessarily thrown 
into the lowest class of free laborers. The 
most industrious and provident among them 
could but enter upon the struggle for employ- 
ment with the most necessitous competitors, 
previously free. The indolent and the reckless 
would either live by depredating on the com- 
munity, as beggars or thieves, or would per- 
ish from disease or starvation, or other con- 
sequences of want and suffering. And such 
were the effects. Even as late as 1693, the 
amount of pauperism and beggary, vagrancy, 
thieving, and other petty crimes, and of ex- 
treme misery, was so great among the poorest 
class in Scotland, that Fletcher of Salton, (an 
able statesman, a true patriot, and a stern re- 
publican, and also a strong reasoner, and an 
elegant scholar,) wrote and published an elabo- 
rate argument, maintaining and urging the 
expediencj' of reducing this class of persons 
to the condition of slavery, not only to relieve 
the community, but for their own benefit, 
and to save them from the extremity of suf- 
f«ring.* 

General and extreine suffering from want im- 
possible i>» a slave- holding community. 

So long as domestic slavery is general in 
any country, and for the most part supplies 



* Fletcher's " Two Discourses on the Affairs of 

. Scotland.^' The author theroin states, that there were 

then not less than 200,000 persons in Scotland bejtging 

■ their bread from door to door. Thitt was a. time of 
unusual distress. But, he adds, " yet, in all time, there 
have been about 100,000 of these vagabonds who have 

• lived witkout any regard to the lavs of the land, or 

■ to those of God and Jiature." He says, further, that 
all the other nations of Europe (except liolland) 
groaned under a similar pressure. As no such evil 
nad been complained of by any of the writers of aii- 

' tiquity, and as much poverty was the consequence, in 
Europe, of the manumission of elaves, Fletcher in- 

•ferred that the existence of slavery was the cause of 
the Comfort and industry of the lower orders in former 

■ times. Hence, this " statesman and patriot of the 
highest order" proposed the reducing of all these des- 

■ titute mendicants and their posterity to slavery, by a 
: solemn act of the legislature, (in and for Scotland,) as 

the only means by which they could be compelled to 
work, and have insured to them the necessaries of lite. 

■ (S^e article " Fletcher of Salton," in Edinburgh En- 
eyclopcedia and quotation therefi'om, at page 749, vol. 

' iji, " Farmer's EegUter." 



the labor of the country, there is no possibil- 
ity of the occurrence of the sufferings of the 
laboring class, such as were described above. 
There, the evils which are caused by extreme 
want and destitution, the competition for sus- 
tenance, class-slavery of labor to capital, and 
lastly pauper slavery, are all the incidents and 
necessary results of free society, and "free 
labflr." Before such evils can visit any la- 
boring class of personal slaves, they must 
have first been emancipated, and personal 
slavery abolished. This abolition of slavery 
is indeed like to occur in every country 
in the progress of society, and where the 
increasing population has no sufficient and 
advantageous outlet. But so long as do- 
mestic slavery remains, and is the main 
supply of labor, among any civilized people, 
it is a certain indication, and the most unques- 
tionable evidence, that extensive and long 
continued suffering from want or hunger have 
as j'et had no existence in that country. The 
first great effect of such distress will be to re- 
duce (by competition) the wages of free labor 
below the cost of maintaining slaves — and 
this effect would next cause the extinction of 
slavery, by the mode of sale and exportation, 
or otherwise the emancipation of all the slaves. 
After this step has been made, of course, in 
due time, the want and suffering, which are 
the necessary incidents and consequences of 
free society, are to be expected tcPfoUow in 
after times. 

When temporary evils, great loss, and dis- 
tress, fall upon slaveholding countries, it is 
not the laboring class (as in free society) that 
feels the first and heavest infliction, but the 
masters and employers. If a slaveholding 
country is visited by dearth, ravaged by war, 
or by pestilence — or suffers under any other 
causes of wide-spread calamity — every domes* 
tic slave is as much as before assured of his 
customary food and other allowances, and of a 
master's care in sickness and infirmity, even 
though the master class, and the country at 
large, have but half the previously existing 
profits, or value of capital. A striking proof 
of this was afforded by the recent (and still 
continuing) general suspension of payments of 
the banks in this country, and the consequent 
universal pecuniary loss and distress. Pay- 
ments of debts could not be obtained, com- 
modities could not be sold, and all manufac- 
turing and some other great industrial opera- 
tions either had to be continued for greatly re- 
duced prices and wages, or to be entirely sus- 
j)ended, if of such kind as could be suspended. 
In consequence, in the Northern States, the 
free hired laborers were thrown out of em- 
ployment, or employed only at much reduced 
wages. Hence all such persons were greatly 
damaged or distressed, and thousands of the 
most destitute were ready to starve. Hence 
hunger mobs were menacing the city of New 
York with pillago, and the last evils of a 
vicious and unbridled and starving populace, 
excited to insurrection and defiance of legal 
authority. Universal loss from this cause also 
visited the slaveholding States, and every 
property holder, and also, to some extent,every 



other free man therein. But not a slave has 
lost a meal, or a comfort ; and as a class, 
the slaves scarcely know of the occurrence 
of this great national calamity which has 
80 universally damaged their masters, and 
the capitalists and employers of labor. Kor 
was the difference of effect owing to the slaves 
being generally engaged in agricultural labors. 
The very large business of manufacturing to- 
bacco, in Virginia, is carried on almost exclu- 
sively by the labor of slaves, and those mostly 
hired by the year. The late bank suspension 
serving to suspend all payments of debts to, 
and income of, their great establishments, they 
were generally compelled to suspend work, 
even though still obliged to feed and support 
their hired slave laborers, who, for son\e time, 
thus received their full allowance and 8U[>- 
port, while remaining perfectly idle, and re- 
turning no compensation whatever to their em- 
ployers who had hired them for the year. 

The " associated labor " doctrine of the social- 
ists true — but deficient in the main agency, 
which slaoery only can supply. 

Thesocialistsof Europe, and of the Northern jing cause. But in all these great and corn- 
States of this Union, (there are none existing plicated works, the artificers had omitted to 
in our Southern States,) of every sect, and ! supply the first and great motive power, which 
however dilferiug on other points, have all lis to be found only in one directing mind, and 
advocated the association of labor, in some [ one controlling will. Supply the one supreme 
former other, as the great means for reforming \ head and governing power to the association 
the evils of society arising from starving com- | of labor, (for the suitable conditions of socie- 
petition for labor. The founders and preach- ! t}', ) and the scheme and its operation will be- 
ers of socialism had all observed and earnestly \ come as perfect as can be expected of any 
appreciated these evils. They saw that, in ad- j human institution. But in supplying this sin- 
vanced society, labor was the slave of capital, ' gle ruling power, the association is thereby eon- 
and that the more capital was enriched by 1 verted to the condition of domestic slavery. 
the employment of labor, the less was acquir- ] And our system of domestic slavery offers in 
ed and retained by the individual laboi'ers, use, and to the greatest profit for all parties 
and the more their wants and sufferings were [ in the association, the realization of all that is 
increased. They also saw, and correctly, that j sound and valuable in the socialists' theories 
there was great loss of time and labor in the and doctrines, and supplies the great and 
domestic operations of every poor family, and i fatal defect of all their plans for practically 



has met with signal, and also speed}', failure; 
except a few, of religious associations, which 
were under the guidance and direction of a 
single despotic head. In all other cases, no mat- 
ter how benevolent and intelligent the lead- 
ers — and though one hour of labor, in each 
day, in this cheap and fertile country, would 
yield more food than fifteen hours' labor in 
Eui'ope — still these associations soon failed in 
their every aim and purpose, and were several- 
ly broken up as soon as their inherent defects 
were made manifesto, and seen to be inevita- 
ble and incurable incidents of the system. 

Yet, so far as their facts and reasoning go, and 
in their main doctrines, the socialists are right. 
Associated labor can be nmch more produc- 
tive, and be conducted more economically, 
than the labors of individual persons or fami- 
lies. The socialist theorists reasoned correctly, 
and in their practical experiments they devised 
good but defective plans. They constructed 
admirable aiid complex machinery to produce 
certain final results, in which every wheel 
and other operating agent was well adjusted as 
a secondary cause, or effect of another preced- 



most in the poorest families — and also, that 
the productive labors of all, if associated, and 
thus aiding each other, might be made much 
more productive. And if by laborers being 
associated in large numbers, and directed by 
their combined knowledge, to the most profit- 
able purposes and ends, all unnecessary waste 
(as occurs in isolated families) was prevented, 
and all the actual eft'orts of labor utilized — 
the net profits and economy of such associa- 
ted labor would be much increased, and thus, 
the laborers might secure and retain a suffi- 
cient subsistence, out of the larger share of 
the profits of their labors, which now goes to 
the share of enjployers and capitalists. Their 
views and doctrines are true in the main, and 
are altogether so plausible, and so applicable 
to the wretched condition of labor in the most 
advanced conditions of society in Europe, that 
the teachers have found numerous believers 
and zealous disciples. Sundry associations 
have been originated in Europe, and establish- 
ed in America, (as a new country only offered 
the needed facilities,) to carry out, in different 
modes, the great object of associating and eom- 



assoeiating labor. A few illustrative views 
will be submitted, which will apply to both 
the theoretical free associated labor, and to 
the practical domestic slave labor. 

Suppose that some extensive industrial ope- 
ration, as the tillage of a great farm, the work- 
ing of a mine, or a cotton factory, is carried 
on by the labor of fifty men, with that of such 
other few members of their families as can be 
spared from home. These men, as usual, gene- 
rally, are married, and have one or more 
young children. But whether singly and 
without children, or husbands, or widowers 
with children, every man is the head of an 
isolated family, for which separate services are 
indispensable. Each home or family requires, 
and has, its separate purchasing of food, (and 
at retail and highest ju-ioes, ) its separate cook- 
ing, washing, fires, lights, n\u'sing of children, 
and of the sick, tfec, Ac. SuclFdutics, in an 
ordinary or average family, fully occupy the 
time of the wife and mother. If there is no 
wife, or the mother is dead, the single man, or 
the father, is more or less required to perform 
the like household and woman's d uties. Thus, of 



bining labor, for the common and general the supposed fifty hou.seholds, probably includ- 
profit and benefit. But every such attempt [ ing not less than from 150 to 'iUO persons, there 



10 



may be but the fifty men to labor for -wages. 
All the many others capable of labor, are fully 
employed as menial servants and nurses for 
their respective families. Tliis is necessarily 
the condition of free laborers, each working 
for himself and his family. 

Now suppose, instead of this free popula- 
tion, that all the laborers and their families 
were slaves to the employer. Then, with pro- 
per and convenient arrangement of buildings, 
<fec., instead of t];iere being fifty women cook- 
ing, washing, and nursing the sick or the helj)- 
less of so many different small hons-jholds, 
four or five might eVen better (with the better 
means and facilities atl'ordcd by the mastei-) 
perform these services for all. Tills would dis- 
pense with some forty-five women, or other 
hands fit for labor, previously engaged in these 
household duties, and which would nearly 
double the number previously working fur 
production and profit. This great increase of 
numbers would fully compensate for the gene- 
ral lessening of each individual's labor, which 
is certain of domestic slaves compared to free 
laborers driven by hunger. Tliis abatement 
of toil, together with the allowances indispen- 
sable to the profitable existence of slavery, 
would render certain the comfortable subsist- 
ence of the slaves, whicii, if it could have been 
for free laborers, would ultimately have given 
way to the sufferings from competition and 
slavery, to want, and next to the pauper 
slavery now so general in England. Further, 
in this form of associated laboi-, there would 
be secured many of the savings in expenses 
which tiie socialists correctly counted upon, 
besides those already mentioned. By the sin- 
gle head and master pi-ovidingall the necessa- 
ries for the maintenance and comfort of the 
laboring class, the contracts and purchases 
would be few and on a large scale, and at 
wholesale prices. There would not, at any 
time, be a deficiency of food, nor any necessa- 
ry deficiency of medical (u* nwsing attendance 
on the sick. When required by econom-^ , fire 
and light could be supplied to all at luAf the 
cost that woTild be required separately for 
each family. Thus, in the institution of do- 
mestic slavery, and in that only, are most 
completely realized the drt-ams and sanguine 
hopes of the socialist school of philanthropists. 
Yet the socialists are ali arrayed among the 
most fanatical and intolerant denouncers of 
domestic slavery, and the most malignant ene- 
mies of slaveholders. 

77te beginning of negro slavery in America, 
and its effects. 

As slavery or serfdom (for the causes above 
stated) was ceasing to exist in England, an- 
other kind i:d slavery was beginning to be es- 
tablished in*he new settlements in America. 
This was the slavery of Afi'ican negroes to 
European masters — of one among the most in- 
ferior to the most superior i*aee of mankind. 
The condition of yoimg colonies, where land 
was at the lowest price, labor at the higiiest, 
and the demand for labor exceeding any pos- 
eible supply, made slavery there especially 



profitable. And as it was agricultural labor 
that was required, and at fii-st for the rudest 
processes, slaves as ignorant and savage as the 
native Africans would serve the piurpose. 
Hence arose, and was extended, the African 
slave-trade. It was first begun, by the Por- 
tuguese, in the latter part of the fifteenth cen- 
tury. But the regular African slave-trade, 
and the extensive use and employment of Af- 
rican slaves in America, occurred in the six- 
teenth century — the same remarkable epoch 
when the Eui-o])ean mind, and European en- 
terprise, received their greatest impulse, and 
made the grear.est improvements — when the 
art of printing was discovered, the Protestant 
religion was established, the modern i-oute to 
India and the rich East was found, and when 
America was discovered, and a new hemis- 
phere, almost untilled jireviously, was, for the 
first time, ready to receive settlement and cul- 
ture from the white race, directing the labor 
of black slaves. Wlien the Caucasian mind 
thus commands and directs the bodily powei'3 
of the ignorant negro, it is the best possible 
form of slavery, and the condition which con- 
duces most to the benefit of both the white 
and the black race — and especially is best for 
the hajipiness and improvement of the latter. 
Indeed, it is the only condition in which the 
negro i-ace has received much enlightenment, 
or civilization, or real Christianity, in the 
thousands of years during which African bar- 
barism has been known to exist. 

Having designed to confine my remarks 
to the politico economical or utilitarian view 
of negro slavery, other questions have not 
even been touched, which some readers would 
deem much the most important, to wit: the 
Bible authority for, and the religious and 
Christian influence and operation of slavery. 
These branches of the general subject have 
been fully discussed bj' earlier writers, far bet- 
ter qualified than myself to treat them. But 
there is one remarkable statistical fact, which, 
though it is the most important in its religious 
bearing, is also connected with my special pur- 
pose. The following passage, copied from the 
recent work of the Rev. J. C. 8tiles, goes to 
show that negro slaA'^ery in the Southern 
States has made twice as many Christians as 
all other missionarj' efforts have effected 
among heathens, throughout the world: 

"In 1855, heathen church-membership is 
set down at 180,000. The present estimate of 
colored church members in the Methodist 
Churcli South alone, [which includes slave- 
holding Slates oidy, and does not include Mary- 
land and a part ot' Virginia,} is 175,000. Eight 
or ten years ago, the Baptist colored member- 
ship at the South was recorded as only 4,000 
less than the Methodist. When to these two 
numbei's, you add all the colored members of 
other unincluded organizations of Methodists 
and Baptists, also of Episcopalians, Lutherans, 
and Presbyterians, Old School, New School, 
and Cumberland, you readily reach an aggre- 
gate of colored church membership near twice 
as large as the strictly heathen orthodox church 
membership of the world." — Modern Reform 
Examined — Appendix, p. 277. 



11 



The great extetit of slavery in Africa, and the 
change therefrom to slavery in America. 

The social and political state of the negro 
race iu Africa has always been the same. The 
darkest ignorance, with savage ferocity and 
cruelty, have been universal. The whole pop- 
ulation was divided into difterent and usually 
hostile tribes, each governed by an ignorant, 
savage, and bloody despot, having unlimited 
authority. Personal slavery was everywhere 
so extended that much the greater niunber of 
the people were slaves to individual masters; 
and their slavery was the most galling and in- 
tolerable, because of the savage ignorance of 
the masters, and theii- consequent recklessness 
of the happiness or the lives of those in their 
power. The exchange of physical conditions, 
from being a slave iu Africa, in savage society 
and to a savage master, and under the general 
form and conduct of unlimited despotic gov- 
ernment, there universal, to the general or 
usual condition of slaves in these Southern 
States, would be even more conducive to the 
benefit of the slaves than of their new mas- 
ters. And even with all the evils, injustice, 
sufferings, and cruelties which accompanied 
the transporting of slaves from Africa to Amer- 
ica, (while the traffic was legal and uninter- 
rupted,) the change still was probably benefi- 
cial to most of tlie transported slaves, and cer- 
tainly to their descendants in all subsequent 
time. The slaves so obtained were generally 
such as had been slaves in Africa, or I'ecent 
captives iu war, whom enslavement saved 
from being killed. If any previously free 
were included, it was because the tenure of 
freedom was of little value, and every man's 
freedom, as well as his life, was at the dispo- 
sal, either by caprice or cruelty, of the despot 
of the tribe. It was manifestly to the inte- 
rest of the slave-traders to bring their cargoes 
in the best condition to the market in Ameri- 
ca. Therefoi'c, self-interest prompted them to 
take the best care of the health, and lives, and 
consequently of the comfort, of the slaves 
when on their passage across the ocean. Con- 
sidering the difference of the previous respec- 
tive- conditions, it is probable that all the evils 
and pliysical sufferings of the Africans, when 
thus transported to Amei-ica, were not greater 
to their brutish feelings than are the different 
evils, both moi'al and physical, suffei'ed by the 
lower class of free and voluntary Euiopean 
emigrants, who are now continually brought, 
in ship loads, to America. There are, indeed, 
abundant causes for wrongs and sufferings 
from injustice and cruelty, previous to and du- 
ring the transportation, in both these cases, as 
in every other state of complete subjection of 
any human beings to others. There were, doubt- 
less, numerous eases of great injustice and hor- 
rible cruelty iu the early slave-trade, as there 
are now in many particular and exceptional 
cases of the existing negro slavery in these 
Southiu-u States. Many such abuses in the 
slave-trade might have been, and ought to 
have been, prevented by proper legal regula- 
tions. But the existence of such evils, both 
iu the former and present condition of negro 



slaves, is no ground for condemning and de- 
nouncing the institution of slavery, more than 
any other wide spread and generally benefi- 
cial institution, because of its accompanying 
evils, and even if such evils are inevitable. 

Former and more recent opinions as to the 

morality or immorality of slavery. 

It is interesting and curious to observe the 
different and shifting lights in which slavery 
and the slave-trade have been viewed at dif- 
ferent times. From all historical and cotempo- 
raneous testimony, it may be inferred that, un- 
til in modern times, slavery in itself was never 
deemed by any to be a violation of morality, 
or as contrary to humanity, or as ground for 
offence to the conscience or sensibility of the 
most virtuous and religious persons. In 
Greece, and afterwards in the Roman Empire, 
neither among niaste!*s nor slaves, did the in- 
stitution of shivery, or the ordinary condition 
and the obligations of slave;?, seem to be ever 
considered as unjust or opj^ressive, more than 
the difference of conditions of property and 
rank, of luxurious indulgence and abject want 
and misery, and the extremity of human suf- 
fering, such as now exist everywhere, and are 
especially to lie noticed in free and rich Eng- 
land. Indeed, there are now hundreds who, 
entertaining socialist or agrarian opinions, 
denounce and contend against what they 
deem the wrong and iniquity of the unequal 
distribution of pi'operty, and would be ready 
to maintain their doctrines by foice and blood- 
shed, where, in ancient times, there was one 
moral reasoner, or even one slave, who held 
the modern doctrine of slavery being essen- 
tially wrong and sinful, and a grievous and 
unjust oppression of the slave l)y the master. 
The philopo]iher Ejiictetus was a slave, and 
was undoubtedly and immeasurably superior 
to his master in learning and moral worth. 
Yet, he did not complain, either of his own 
position, or of the injustice and wrong of 
slavery in general. The great moral writer 
and moralist, Samuel Johnson, when, with all 
his intellectual Inhors he could scarcely earn 
a bare and wretched subsistence, would have 
been as like to c<>in|)lain that he was not raised 
as much higher in fortune ami rank, as he was 
truly superior in intellect and \\orth, to most 
of the actiuil possessors of either in England. 
From before the daysof Abraliani to within the 
nineteenth century, the mere fnetof a man's be- 
ing a slave was no more deemed wrongful than 
the other general fact that all the political 
power and wealth of a count i-y should be held 
by a few persons, (and these not th.- nuist wise 
or virtuous,) without regard to the consent or 
opinions of others ; and that a much greater 
number of their countrymen should be with- 
out any political jiovver even for defence, and 
without daily bread, or means for subsistence. 
These differences in Isngland, the most free 
country in the Old World, are greater, and 
more unportant than the diiferenee Itetween 
the necessary conditions of master and slav4. 

The propriety of placing these cases in com- 
parison will be denied on the ground that the 
1 free man, however low, is not debarred by 



12 



law, as the slave is, from rising above his first 
condition. It is, indeed, theoretically and 
physically possible that the child of a day 
laborer, or a pauper, in England, may rise to 
the higheS, political distinctions that are not 
hereditary. But, in practice, such elevation 
would be more improbable tlian a slave, in 
other countries, rising to wealth and high pub- 
lic honors. Where difference of race did not 
(as it does of African slaves) forbid, there have 
been many more cases of slaves and the sons 
of slaves, becoming leaders of armies and rulei's 
of kingdoms, than there have been of the sons 
of free English laborers or peasants rising to 
high rank and wealth. When Diocletian rose 
from the condition of a slave to bo Emperor 
of the Roman world, he did not encounter and 
overcome such great obstacles to his ascending 
progress as would the free laborer of the 
greatest natural talent in England, to become 
Prime Minister of the kingdom, or Command- 
er-in-chief of its armies. 

Origin and progress of the African slave- 
trade — Changes of public opinion thereupon. 
Considerations of morality and religion, or 
of benevolence, had no bearing whatever on 
the beginning or the progress of the extinction 
of slavery, or villenage, in England, and else- 
where in Europe. It was simplj- a question 
of gain or loss to the previous masters. And, 
as conscientious or religious scruples had no 
influence to encourage or promote this move- 
ment of emancipation in Europe, neither did 
Buch scruples exist, or have tlie least operation 
in restraining the beginning and earl}' progress 
of the African slave-trade, for the supply of 
America. Las Casas, one of the most benevo- 
lent of men, a sincere and devout christian, 
and a philanthropist as earnest and zealous as 
Wilberforce or Clarkson, was the first to pro- 
pose (to the Emperor Charles V.,) the bring- 
ing of African slaves to South America, by 
means of the slave-trade, that, by their sub- 
stituted bondage and labor, might be saved 
the feebler race of native Americans, who were 
fast dying out and disappearing under the 
severe slavery and labor to which they had 
been subjected by the Spanish colonists. This 
bondage was destructive to the American 
slaves, and yet of little profit to their masters. 
Just the reverse of both these conditions were 
found in regard to the more docile, patient, 
strong, and enduring Africans. 

The distinguished navigator Hawkins was 
the earliest English slave- tradei". For this and 
other naval and patriotic services. Queen 
Elizabeth bestowed on him the then liigh dig- 
nity and reward of knighthood; and further, 
she purchased an investment, and held a share 
in Sir .John Hawkins' continued slave-trading 
business. England became the great slave- 
trader, exceeding in the number of negroes 
annually transported to, and sold in America, 
the vessels of all the world besides. Tiie busi- 
ness was deemed of great eoiumercial and 
national value, was encouraged by the laws, 
wag recommended bj' the public declarations 
ofs everal English monarchs, (one of them 
"William HI.,) and certainly was discounte- 



nanced by none. The extensive smuggling of 
African slaves by English ships into Spanish 
America, in contravention of the laws and ex- 
clusive commercial policy of Spain, (which did 
not oppose the colonies receiving slaves, but 
only the trading with anj' other nation than 
Spain,) was the cause of war between the two 
countries ; and by the treaty of peace (of 
Utrecht) which closed that war, England re- 
quired and obtained fromSfiain the formal grant 
of t he right to bring and sell a certain large num- 
ber of African slaves annually to the Spanish 
colonies. Kow, what Queen Elizabeth did, and 
other English Monarchs recommended, or what 
an\' English administration sustained and pro- 
moled, would be far from indicating that such 
acts were virtuous, or even otherwise than in- 
iquitous. But such open advocating, sustaining, 
and participating in the slave-trade, and the 
almost monopolizing it by the English people 
wiien it Avas naost extended, and this course 
being continued far into the reign of George 
111., will suffice to prove that the slave-trade, 
so appioved by Monarclis, Parliament, and 
people, for centuries, and opposed by not even 
a single voice, could not have been deemed 
contrary either to morality or religion. Even 
v/ithin the last seventy years, and after some 
of the founders of the opposite doctrines had 
begun to speak, the general opinion of the 
most moral and religious members of English 
society had not begun to condemn slavery in 
the abstract, or even the actual cruelties of 
the African slave-trade. A sufiicient proof of 
this assertion is presented in the circumstances 
of the life of the Rev. John Kewton. In the 
earlier portion, and through the prime of his 
life, he had been regularly engaged in the 
African slave-trade. He had continued in this 
business as captain of a slave-ship, and when 
he was free to choose any preferable trade ; 
and moreover, he so continued to be a regular 
slave-trader long after he had become a pious, 
devoted, and exemplary christian. His sin- 
cerity and his piety have not been doubted 
by any of those who have since denounced the 
iniquity of slavery in general, and more es- 
pecially, of the African slave-trade. It is true, 
that the Rev. John Newton, late in life, and 
when a distinguished and venerated preacher 
of the Gospel, allied himself to the tlien new 
and growing anti-slave-trade and slavery 
party of Clarkson and Wilberforce. But this 
later position of his, in no degree, contradicts 
what 1 have inferred from his earlier and long 
continued business as a slave-trader, and when 
he was no less %ioral, conscientious, and chris- 
tian, ihan in his later and more distinguished 
ecclesiastical position. 

Beginning and progress of the anii-slavery 
doctrine and sect in the American Revo- 
lution. 

Virginia and South Carolina, and perhaps 
other of the then colonies of England, had 
earnestly opposed the further introduction of 
African slaves. But their wishes were disre- 
garded, and their legislative enactments for 
this purpose were annulled by the mother 
country, that her profits from the slave-trade 



13 



might not be lessened. These facts stand 
forth among the grievances stated in both the 
Declarations of Independence, first of Vir- 
ginia, and of the United States. At that time, 
and earlier, the prohibition of the further 
supply of slaves from Africa was prope.", even 
upon grounds of economy and expedienc}'. 
At an earlier time, the slaves in A'^irginia had 
exceeded the whites in number in the pro- 
portion of ten to seven. In South Carolina, 
the slaves had been thrice as numerous as the 
white ]^opulation. — (Dew's Essay on Slavery.) 
In addition, the ihen settled territory of the 
colonies was all east of the Alleghany moun- 
tains, *and there appeared not even a chance 
for e-\'pansion bej'ond the Mississippi. Under 
these circumstances, sound discretion and pol- 
icy required the cessation of any further 
supply of Aft-ican slaves. But the most cor- 
rect opinions in regard to national policy, 
when contested by an opposing and h.ostile 
party or nation, are apt to run into excess 
and extremes. Hence, when the further in- 
troduction of slaves into this country was 
properly deemed an evil, and a grievance 
inflicted by England merely for her greater 
profit in the slave-trade, to aid the just oppo- 
sition to and denunciation of this oppression, 
every supposed evil of slavery was cited, and 
exaggerated. This disposition, in conjunction 
with the then first springing and fast growing 
theorttical doctrines of the equal, natural, and 
political rights of man, which were conceived 
and nourished in the conflict of opinions 
caused by the American Revolution, (and 
which doctrines admitted of no exceptions to 
their general application,) gave existence to the 
anti-slavery doctrines and sect, which after- 
wards became so greatlj- extended, and have 
had such great influence in loth hemispheres. 
But while Jefferson and many (if not all) 
others of the Republican leaders and assertors 
of American liberty, thus acquired and erro- 
neousl}^ maintained the opinion of the evil and 
criminality of African slavery, and hoped for 
its future extinction in this country, none of 
them would have advocated, or submitted to, 
the end since and now sought by the modern 
disciples of this doctrine, in the immediate 
and speedy abolition of the obligations of 
Blavery. 

Progress of atUi-slavery doctrine and fanat- 
icism in England, France, and the tfnited 
States. 

The new anti-slavery doctrines soon spread 
in England, and far more extensively. For 
there, the enthusiasts and fanatics had no 
practical knowledge of African slavery, and 
addressed their arguments to a people still 
more ignorant of the whole subject, and who 
had nothing to lose, or to suffer, from the 
most complete carrying into practical opera- 
tion of these new theoretical views. Still 
more rapidly, completely, and disastrously, 
did these views of natural equality of races, 
and of negro emancipation, spread in France — 
they being exactly suited to the then revolu- 
tionary madness of that country. The gen- 
<8ral opinions and poUtical dogmas prevailing 



in France, at that time, which were called 
republican, and falsely deemed promotive of 
the liberty and well-being of mankind, carried 
with them, as a corollary, the doctrine that 
negro slavery was not only a great national 
evil, but a crime; and the most moderate and 
conservative reasoners, and even in these 
Southern States, generally admitted that negro 
slavery was a a;reat evil and injustice, which 
it was desirable should be extinguished m 
soon as it could be done beneficially for the 
slaves, and safely for the masters. As late as 
1830, this speculative anti-slavery opinion 
was almost universal in Virginia. Not a 
voice was then heai-d to vindicate or approve 
the institution, or even to defend its existence 
and continuance, except on the grounds of 
necessity — a necessity caused by the political 
inability of the colonies formerly to prevent 
slaves being introduced by the mother coun- 
tr}', and subsequently the manifest danger and 
general destruction that would follow inime- '■/ 
diate emancipation. While the slaveholders 
held strongly to their legal rights of property, 
and would have resisted to death any foreign 
interference therewith, there was scarcelj' one 
of them, of cultivated mind and feelings, who 
did not deem negro slavery an evil, public 
and private, political, moral, and economical, 
and who would not have rejoiced to have in 
prospect its future and safe extinction. But 
this moderate condemnation was not enough 
for the fanatical abolition faction of the 
Noi'thern States, which was then beginning 
to exhibit its malignity and strength, and 
which has ever since been increasing in num- 
bers and violence. These Northern opposers 
of slavery, having nothing to lose personally, 
or at home, have been preaching the natural 
equality of rights of the negro race, and 
urging the speediest and most eft'ectual con- 
summation of their doctrines of universal 
emancipation and liberty, without the least 
regard to the evils that would follow. These 
sentiments have been fast growing and extend- 
ing in the Northern States and in Europe, and 
are still extending among the more ignorant 
and greater number in all countries in which 
personal slavery has no existence. But the \ 
violence of the attacks and denunciations of 
this fanatical school has di-iven slaveholders 
to examine their own position, and especially 
to investigate, in proper manner, the question 
of slavery in all its aspects and bearings. 
Such examination and investigation, by strict 
reasoning, had never been before applied to 
this question. And, the result has been that 
nearly all thinking and reasoning men now as 
fully believe negro slaverj^ to be a great ben- 
efit for this country, as they formerly be- 
lieved it to be a great evil. And not only 
has this change been pi'oduced in these slave- 
holding states, where self interest would serve 
to quicken and fortify perception of this truth, 
but also in the Northern States and in Eng- 
land there is a great and decided reaction in 
this respect, and change of opinion with many 
enlightened and the least prejudiced minds. 
And not only have many men been thus 
brought to acknowledge the highly beneficial 



14 



effects of negro slavery, but also to advocate 
the African slave trade, under legal permission 
and proper regulations and restrictions. 

Legislation of the United States and England 
to suppress the African slave-trade, and the 
consequences. 

As soon as the former colonies had become 
free from the rule of England, Virginia and 
most of the others prohibited, and entirely 
prevented thenceforward, the importation of 
slaves from Africa or any other foreign coun- 
try. At a later time, aiid after a long strug- 
gle, the English Parliament enacted the sup- 
pression of the slave-trade from and after 
1807. Since, the Governments of both tlie 
United States and England have treated the 
slave-trade as piracy, and have used every 
effort to prevent its being prosecuted by the 
people or ships of the respective countries. In 
this legal policy of suppression, France and 
other important powers have concurred, and 
all others agreed in sentiment, and in denun- 
ciation of the slave-trade, except Spain and 
Portugal, which powers continued to receive 
African slaves into their then colonies Cuba 
and Brazil. Finally, Brazil has also forbid- 
den the further importation ; and to Cuba 
alone, and against the laws and treaties of 
Spain, is the African slave-trade still carried 
on. Yet, with all th« stringent and general 
measures used for the suppression of the trade, 
and with British and American vessels of war 
continually cruising about and watching the 
places for embarking slaves in Africa, the at- 
tempted suppression of the slave-trade has 
scarcely had any effect in diminishing the 
number of negroes taken from Africa, while 
the cruelty and sufferings of the ocean trans- 
portation (or of the "middle passage") have 
been made ten-fold more atrocious and life- 
destroying, than they were in the previous 
legal and open trade. Formerly, the owners 
and masters of slave-ships were, at least, un- 
impeded in the use of every means of care for 
thfeir captive slaves that pecuniary or selfish 
interest would dictate. It was not only the 
most humane, but the most profitable proce- 
f dure, to protect the health and the lives of the 
captives, by allowing them good food, enough 
space, and fresh air. But, since the prohibi- 
tion, and the heavy penalties, and great risks 
of capture, the slave-vessels are constructed 
entirely for swift sailing, to avoid being cap* 
txu'ed — and, because of the small sizes and 
low decks of the vessels, the slaves are kept 
in the most hoirible condition of confinement 
and suffering that would not be certainly des- 
tructive of life, so as best to insure the escape 
and safe voyage of the vessel, though it should 
be with but one-half of the slaves left alive. 
For so much had increased the demand and 
prices of slaves, that if no more than half of 
a cargo of slaves perished' on the middle pas- 
sage, tbe other half would return enormous 
profits on thp whole shipment and expense of 
the voyage. In reference to these well-estab- 
lished facts, the so-called "suppression of the 
African slave-trade," by England, has been 
denounced by many of the ablest and most 



zealous of the anti-slavery sect, as an entire 
failure of the object, even in lessening the 
number of slaves exported from Africa, and 
as serving to increase the amount of the cruel- 
ties and sufferings which accompanied the 
former legal trade. 

Height of fanatical opposition to slavery, and 
r'cent reaction and apyproval of the in-tiitu- 
tion. 

But the attempted suppression of the slave- 
trade M'as denounced only for its inefficiency. 
Every opinion that was uttered in regard to 
the suppression was strongly approbatory of 
the object, and in favor of its being rendered 
truly and fully operative. Looking to the 
cruelties and destruction of life, caused by the 
then existing and illegal slave-trade, it was 
regarded with detestation and horror, even 
by the few persons who had so early learned 
to approve of the practical opeiation and re- 
sults of negro slavery of long previous origin, 
and to deem the institution highly beneficial 
to all parties. The change of opinion on this 
subject was recent. As late as 1830, in the 
slaveholding States, there were to be found no 
defenders or approvers of slavery, but only 
apologists for the compulsory participation 
therein of themselves and their countrymen. 
The existence of slavery was still deemed a 
great and unavoidable evil, at first inflicted 
by the unscrupulous avarice of the mother 
and ruling country — and it was hoped by all 
that the condition was but temporary, and 
that, finally, slavery would be removed from 
our country and people. 

Professor Dew, of Virginia, was the first, 
in his "Essay on Slavery," to defend and jus- 
tify the institution, and, as boldly as ably, to 
maintain its utility, and the folly and mad- 
ness of carrying out, in any way, the eman- 
cipation doctrines and schemes of abolitionists, 
whether they were the northern and practi- 
cal, or the southern and theoretical or specu- 
lative views. Never has any work, of mere 
reasoning on previously known facts, had such 
great effect. It seemed as if men in modern 
limes had not before dared to think on this 
subject. Soon the benificent operation of 
slavery in general, (wherever applicable and 
needed,) and, especially, of negro slavei-y in 
these Southern States, was acknowledged by 
many — and since, it has been, and now is, uni- 
versally recognized and maintained, wherever 
negro slavery exists — and also by many of 
the thinking men in countries where anti- 
slavery fanaticism is most prevalent and in- 
tolerant. At this day there are more men in 
the Southern States, and even in Virginia, who 
would now approve of reopening the legal 
African slave-trade, (to supply the present 
great need and demand for labor,) than could 
have been found twenty-five years ago, who 
did not then believe that negro slaverj- was 
an enormous evil and injury, in every aspect, 
and to every interest concerned. And the 
belief of the beneficial operation of African 
slavery, for countries to which it is best suited, 
is now everywhere extending among the com- 
parativdy few men of intelligence, as much 



15 



as the fanatical opposition to slavery is also 
growing and extending among the more nu- 
merous body of the ignorant and deluded, or 
unthinking and prejudiced of the people of 
the Northern States.* 

The dogma of the natural mental equality of 
the black and white races considered. 

When the anti-slavery doctrines were first 
taught, and for many years after, one of the 
main positions of the advocates was, the as- 
sumption of the natural equality and capacity 
for mental improvement of the black and 
white races, or the negro and Caucasian. This 
bold assumption of the one party was either 
tacitly admitted, or but rarely and faintly de- 
nied, by th-e other. It was then generally 
supposed that, with full opportunity and fa- 
cilities, and sufficient time for improvement, 
the negro could be raised to be equal to the 
white man in mental acquirements — or, at 
least, to the capacity for self-government, and 
self-support and preservation. There had 
then been no sufficiently long and full practi- 
cal trial or experiment of this doctrine. Since, 
there have been ample trials in practice which 
have served so fully to prove the contrary, 
that no unprejudiced mind can now admit the 
equality of intellect of the two races, or even 
the capacity of the black race either to be- 
come or remain industrious, civilized, when in 
a state of freedom and under self-govern- 
ment — or, indeed, in any other condition than 
when held enslaved and directed by white 
men. A few general statements and com- 
ments thereon will be here presented, on each 
of the several great and long continued ex- 
periments of freedom conferred on negroes, 
either as individuals, or in societies and com- 
munities, independent of the white race. 



* Professor Dew's Essay, the earliest modern vindi- 
cation and defence of slavery, has obtained for its au- 
thor the highest award of merit, not only for its pri- 
ority, and thus exhibiting original thought and reason- 
ing, but also because this earliest argument, taken as a 
whole, is among the best of all the able recent writings 
on the same side. For, since that beginning, many and 
able publications have appeared, in which slavery has 
been examined and defended on every different 
ground — as in regard to morality and religion, and 
to Christianity^and as to its political, social, and 
economical influences and bearings. In some particu- 
lar branch of the general subject, each of several dif- 
ferent late writers has excelled all his predecessors. 
But no one, yet, has so well covered the whole ground 
of investigation, exposition, and argument, as Profes- 
sor Dew. The next in order of time, and of merit, and 
for its extensive scope, is a small volume which was 
published in Philadelphia, in IS:?*}. It appeared with- 
out the author's name, though it offers internal evi- 
dence that he was a Norlliern man. This work, which 
is entitled " Tlic South Vindicated from the Treason 
and Tanaticism of the Northern Abolitionists," well 
deserves republication, and the attentive perusal of all 
who desire lo be well informed on the general subject. 
Of other, and able, and conclusive arguments, but di- 
rected to particular branches only of the general ques- 
tion, the letters of Gov. J H. Hammond, of South 
Carolina, to Ularkson, and the "Scriptural and Statis- 
tical views of Slavery," by the Rev. T. Stringfellow, 
for their particular and limited objects and popular 
manner, deserve especial commendation. The "So- 
ciology," and other recent publications of George Fitz- 
hugh, Esq., are worthy of high commendation for 
novel and profoun<i views on the comparison of slavery, 

xpith what is mi«*^nlled. ** free " soeietv. 



The intellectual inferiority of the black race, 
tested by facts, in the United States. 

Hundreds of thousands of individual cases 
of emancipated negro slaves, and their de- 
scendants, have existed in this country in the 
last two centuries. This class has now in- 
creased, in Virginia alone, to more than 
50,000 in number. In the non-slaveholding 
States, also, there are numerous free negroes. 
It is true, that when thus interspersed among 
the much more numerous and dominant class 
of white inhabitants, the free negroes are sub- 
jected to some depressing and injurious in- 
fluences, from which they would be relieved 
if forming a separate community. But, on 
the other hand, they have derived more than 
compensating benefits from their position, in 
the protection of government to person and 
property, and the security of both, and exemp- 
tion from the evils of war, and from great op- 
pression by any stronger power. Yet, in all 
this long time, and among such great num- 
bers of free negroes, everywhere protected in 
person and property, and in the facilities to 
acquire property — and in some of the North- 
ern States, endowed with political, as well as 
civil rights and power, equal with the white 
citizens — still to this day, and with but few 
individual exceptions, the free negroes in every 
State of this Confederacy, are noted for ignor- 
ence, indolence, improvidence, and poverty — 
and very generally, also, for vicious h.abits, 
and numerous violations of the criminal laws. 
In this plentiful country, where the onlj^ great 
want is for labor, and where every free laborer 
may easily earn a comfortable support, this 
free negro class is so little self-suslaining, that 
it now scarcely increases, in general, by pro- 
creation, and would annually decrease through- 
out the United States, if not continually re- 
cruited by new emancipations, and by fugi- 
tives from slavery. The free negroes fare best 
in the slaveholding States, and in them only 
is the whole increase by procreation. In the 
Northern or "free" States, if the free negroes 
were not continually added to by emancipated 
and fugitive slaves from the South, there 
would be seen a continued diminution of num- 
ber, from the effects of suifering from want, 
and vicious habits. In all this long time of 
freedom, and with great facilities for improve- 
ment, there has not appeared among all these 
free negroes a single individual showing re- 
markable, or even more than ordinary, power 
of intellect — or any power of mind that would 
be deemed worth notice in any individual of 
the white race. Yet, in the Northern States, free 
schoofS are open to the children of the blacks 
as freely as to the whites — many have re- 
ceived collegiate education — and nothing but 
the immutable decree of God. fixing on them 
mental inferiority, has "prevented high grades 
of intellect and "of learning, being displayed 
in numerous cases. Further, the absence of 
industry is as general as the inferiority of 
mental powers. Some few free negroes are 
laborious, frugal, provident, and thrifty. A 
very few have acquired considerable amounts 
of Dronertv. But these rare qualities were 



16 ' 



not hereditary — and the children of these su- 
perior individuals would be as like as others 
to fall back to the ordinary condition of their 
class. In short, taken throughout, and with 
but few exceptions, the free negro class, in 
every part of this country, is a nuisance, and 
noted for ignorance, laziness, improvidence, 
and vicious habits. 

Experiment of colonizing freed negroes in Li- 
beria. 
But philanthropists, while admitting these 
facts, had associated the continued debase- 
ment of the free negroes in this country to 
their previous low condition, and to their still 
inferior position to the far more numerous 
and dominant white class. Relief from tliis 
alleged evil to the blacks, and, with it, everj^ 
benefit of industry, thrift, and improvement, 
was expected to be obtained by the free negro 
when colonizing Liberia, in Africa. That col- 
ony has now been established forty years. It 
has been sustained, by funds raised by or for 
the Colonization Society, better than any 
colony ever before planted and settled by 
white people. It has wanted for nothing 
that the most benevolent and parental care 
of guardianship could provide. The settlers 
were generally of the best of the class of free 
negroes of this country, or of emancipated 
slaves, selected and provided for by their for- 
mer owners, to enjoy the supposed benefits of 
freedom. The people and the government 
have had the protecting, beneficial, and 
always-desired guidance of white intellect; 
and there has been no injurious influence 
from white residents, or foreign interference. 
Besides all the money and commodities so 
liberally bestowed by benevolent individiials 
in this counti-y to plant and support this col- 
ony, some of the State governments liave 
afforded to it pecuniary or other aid, and the 
Federal Government has given mucli more 
important, though indirect aid and support, 
and also military and naval aid and protec- 
tion. Further: since the so-called indepen- 
dence and ostensible self-government of Libe- 
ria, the higher officers of government have 
been mostly mulattoes, who are as much of 
the white as of the black blood and intellect. 
With all tliese advantages, and such long sup- 
port by the money, and direction by the intel- 
lect, of the whites, the colony of Liberia is a 
complete (though a partly concealed and de- 
nied) failure. With a soil of exuberant fer- 
tility, and a climate no less bountiful for pro- 
duction, the inhabitants of Liberia do not yet 
produce sufficient food and other necessary 
means for subsistence. All the necessftries of 
life, including rice, sugar, and others of the 
most ready and plentiful products of the coun- 
try, sell at such exhorbitant prices as to show 
plainly their iisual scarcity.* Lately the peo- 



*The following paragraph, not long since, appeared 
in the Richmond Dispatch, and varioua other papers, 
without comment, and has not been contradicted, and, 
therefore, is presumed to be correct, thougli the au- 
thority was not stated : 

. " A correspondent, at Liberia, writes that provisions 
are mostly imported from the United States. Flour 
ranges from $12 to $16 per barrel: hams and bacon 



pie were even menaced by actual famine, be- 
cause of the great scarcity of articles of food, 
and the want of means to purchase food from 
abroad. Indolence and aversion to regular 
labor are universal. Agricultural operations 
and production are in the lowest condition. 
If the long-continued aid of the Colonization 
Society was even now withheld, and also the 
benevolent guidance and influence of the in- 
tellect of the white guardians and protectors, 
this much boasted and falsely eulogised colo- 
ny, and now "Republic of Liberia," would 
rapidly decline below its present low condi- 
tion; and all the residents, who could not es- 
cape from it, to find shelter under the shadow 
of the white man's presence and government, 
would sink to the state of savage barbarism 
and heathen ignorance and vice, such as had 
formerly overspread the land. The only 
means by which negroes in Africa, as well as 
in America or elsewhere, can generally be 
made industrious and useful as laborers, and 
civilized, moral, and christian, will be when 
they are placed in the condition of domestic 
slaves to white masters. 

Still earlier was made, and has been much 
longer continued, the settlement of free ne- 
groes in the colony of Sierra Leone, under the 
direction and care, and at the expense of the 
British Government. It is enough to say for 
this experiment that its failure has been much 
more signal than that of Liberia. The set- 
tlers of Sierra Leone were mostly recaptured 
and uncivilized Africans. In Liberia nearly 
all the colonists had been civilized by the 
best ])reparatory training of slavery in Ameri- 
ca. This diff'erence alone would serve to ac- 
count for the greater failure of the scheme of 
Sierra Leone. 

AVhile so many whites in Europe, and even 
in America, blinded bj' prejudice, fanaticism, 
or ignorance of the negro characteristics, have 
argued to maintain the natural equality of 
the negro mind, the negroes themselves, in- 
cluding the most enlightened among them, 
have universally acknowledged the inferiority 
of their lace. One of the results of this ac- 
knowledged inferiority is the well known gene- 
ral unwillingness of negroes to be governed by 
men of their own race, compared to their usual 
submissive obedience and docility to the gov- 
ernment of white rulers. It is well known to 
every slaveholder, who has made an overseer 
of one of his slaves, that the greatest difficulty 
was because of the discontent of the negroes 
to be so governed. They will, in most cases, 
exhibit unwillingness to be commanded by the 
most worthy and respectable of their fellows, 
even if allied to them by ties of blood and 
friendship, and sometimes will proceed to dis- 
obedience, and even mutinous conduct, when 
they would have submissively obeyed and 
respected any white man as their overseer, 
even if, in truth, less respectable as a man, 
and less lenient and less intellisjent in exercis- 



from 20 to 25 cents per pound ; hard bread $18 to $12 
per 100 pounds ; rice $5 per bushel ; butter (52^ cents 
per pound^ salt fish from $12 to $14 per barrel ; sugar 
25 cents per pound ; potatoes $1 25 per bushel ; and 
everything for family use proportionately high." 



17 



ing the deputed authority of the master. 
This respect for white, and impatience of ne- 
gro rule, extends no less through the class of 
free negroes. It is because of this general 
feeling that so few of this class have been or 
can be prevailed upon to emigrate voluntarily 
to Liberia. In these slaveholding States, the 
free negroes, in their usual degraded moral 
position, and inferior political rights, subject 
indirectly, if not legally, to the dominant 
white race, necessarily must suffer injustice 
and hardship from bad treatment in many 
cases. Yet it is rare that one of them, 
whether the most ignorant and degraded, or 
of the most worthy and intelligent, can be in- 
duced to accept the offered bounty of the Col- 
onization Society, and of the State, to be sent 
to Liberia, and there be made a landholder, 
and an equal sliarer of political rights. So 
strong is their repugnance to be governed by 
negroes, or to live where there are no wliite 
inhabitants, and, (as they say,) " no gentle- 
men," that if the free negroes of Virginia 
should be compelled to choose between being 
sent to Liberia, to be there free citizens, or to 
be made slaves, with their families, to white 
men in Virginia, it is probable that more than 
half of them would choose to become slaves, 
to secure white rulers and protectors. 

Experiment of the independence of negroes in 
Hayti. 

An earlier experiment than Liberia, and on 
a much larger scale, has been tried in the 
insurrection and independence of the slaves 
of St. Domingo. Even this bloody, and finally 
successful insurrection, which is so generally 
understood as presenting full evidence of like 
dangers attending the condition of slavery, 
and of the disposition of slaves to rebel, and 
their ability to succeed, if justly viewed, will 
fully prove the reverse of all these positions. 
It was not the slaves of St. Domingo, but tlie 
wealthy and educated class of free mulattoes, 
that commenced the insurrection. And even 
their efforts would have been speedily and 
completely quelled, if the contest had been 
left to be decided by the people of St. Do- 
mingo only. But the then insane government 
of the powerful mother country interposed, 
declaring first in favor of equal political 
rights to the free mulattoes, afterwards re- 
pealing that grant, and finally decreeing 
emancipation and equal rights to all the 
slaves. Armies were sent from France to 
enforce these different and opposite decrees. 
And it was by tliese extraneous circumstances, 
and especially by the armed coercion by 
France, that the final overthrow of the 
whites, and their consequent general mas- 
sacre, were effected, and this formerly beau- 
tiful and fruitful territory was made a deso- 
late wilderness and ruin — as it still remains, 
after seventy years of undisturbed negro 
domination. Even for two years after the 
mad declaration of equal rights to the slaves, 
by the National Convention, and after bloody 
hostilities had been long carried on between 
the two free classes, (of whites and mulattoes,) 
and after a French array was in the field to 



sustain universal emancipation, the slaves 
were still peacefully laboring, as before, on 
their masters' plantations. But when so long 
and so urgently invited, and by the then 
stronger party of their superiors, to accept 
their freedom, and (what was to their savage 
dispositions more inviting) to rob, ravage, and 
slay at will, it would have been strange, 
indeed, if these long continued invitations, 
urged by difi^erent parties, had not been at 
last obeyed. Then it was, and only by these 
means, that the work of slave insurrection 
was begun, and the subsequent unprecedented 
rapine and slaughter, and unspeakable out- 
rages and horrors, were consummated. If 
there had been only white masters and negro 
slaves, and no foreign and stronger power, 
although the whites were only one-tenth the 
nimiber of their slaves, their mastership would 
never have been seriously disturbed. This, 
however, is not the present question — but the 
success or failure of the subsequent experiment 
of negro independence and self-government. 
And this question does not- need discussion, so 
well established is the failure and the long 
continued, and still continuing desolation of 
the country, and debased condition of its in- 
habitants. Because the facts are notorious 
and indisputable, and can be shown by statis- 
tical documents, it will be enough here to say, 
generally, that in regard to cultivation and 
production, population, social condition, and 
political importance — refinement, morals, and 
religion — in short, in everything that can 
render a country or its people valuable — the 
general decline of St. Domingo (or Hayti) has 
been far greater than any person or party 
could possibly have anticipated. Neither in 
the descendants of the 'former slaves is there 
any such improvement of comfort, happiness, 
or of capacity, that can compensate for the 
inferiority of the present highest and ruling 
class, compared to their former white mas- 
ters. Of course, the individuals composing 
the present higher classes, by the aid of 
wealth, and means for education, are much 
better informed than they could have been if 
remaining slaves. But the general or aver- 
age amount of intelligence, as of their indus- 
try and productions, is far below what it was 
formerly — and the class of laborers is far 
below what they would have been, if they 
had continued slaves, and for tiie last seventy 
years had been operated on by the civilizing 
! influence of slavery. Further : as much as 
the case of St. Domingo proves from my ar- 
gument, after all, it was not a trial of a really 
freed negro people. The black general Touis- 
sant, (the only truly great man j-et known 
of the nettro race,) who, after suppressing the 
civil war, assumed and exercised despotic and 
severe authority, compelled the former slaves 
to return to the plantations, and to labor, 
under military coercion, and severe punish- 
ments for disobedience. They were to receive 
a stated share of the products of the land (one- 
third,) and were coerced to labor" by govern- 
ment officials, instead of by individual mas- 
ters. But under this much less efficient, ben- 
eficial, and profitable form of bondage, the 



18 



former slaves were not less than formerly 
compulsory laborers, and driven by corporeal 
punishment, as they continue to be to this 
time. This system of discipline and constraint 
is, of necessity, extremely defective. But im- 
perfect as it is, compared to individual slavery, 
it has served to retard the rapidity of the 
descent which thi-; community has been, and 
still is, making to unproductive and savage 
barbarism. If any civilized people were now 
. (as ought to be done, and will be done in 
\ some future time,) to conquer and re-colonize 
Hayti, and reduce the whole laboring, or 
destitute, or idle classes to their former condi- 
tion of domestic slavery, the change would be 
beneficial for the re-enslaved classes, for the 
whole community and country, and for the 
commercial and civilized world. 

In the seventy years of independence of St. 
Domingo, and of freedom from invasion and 
foreign aggression, except Touissant, (who 
had been a slave, and continued to be perfect- 
ly illiterate,) there has not arisen a single 
man who would be deemed of more than ordi- 
nary ability, if he had been of the white race. 
The higher classes there possess all the still 
remaining wealth of the country, and can 
command every facility for education, and 
mental instruction and impiovement. There 
have ruled and flourished hundi-eds of high 
dignitaries, military, political, and clerical — 
emperors and kings, dukes, generals, and bish- 
ops. But theie has not yet appeared even 
one man whom all the advantages of wealth, 
education, and rank have enabled to exhibit 
the possession of Strong or remarkable mental 
power. Is not this alone, sufficient to prove 
the natural and great inferiority of the negro 
mind f * 

JExperimeiit of general emancipation in the 
British colonies. 

A fourth great experiment of negro freedom 
has been devised and conducted under the 
direction, patronage, and philanthropic care 
of tlie enlightened and powerful British Gov- 
ernment. This was the ^general emancipation 
of the slaves in all the British colonies of the 
West India Islands, British Guiana, and 
wherever African and domestic slavery had be- 
fore existed under British authoritj'. Proofs 
and details of facts are notcalledforin thiscase. 
The failure is universal, signal, and undeniable, 
(with a (ew notable exceptions.) even by the 
most zealous of tlie previous British advocates 
of the act of emanci))ation, or the abolition- 
ists who continue to urge the like measure, 
with the like results manifestly impending, 
for our slaveholding States. 

Previous to this extensive, simultaneous, and 
peaceful emancipation, the abolitionists of 
England, and elsewhere, had maintained that, 
after emancipation, tlie negroes would imme- 
diately become hired laborers — and (judging 
erroneously from the condition of things in 
England) that the free labor thus supplied 
would be even more valuable and cheap to the 
employers than the former slave labor. On 
the contrary, universal idleness of the blacks 
has taken the place of the former universal in- 



dustry in the British islands. As the philan- . 
thropic British sentiment which induced the 
emancipation, (and forced it on the former 
slaveholders,) cannot resort to the wholesome 
discipline of Touissant, to force the newly 
freed blacks to labor, the general neglect of 
labor, and decrease of production, are even. 
worse and more hopeless in Jamaica, than ia * 
St. Domingo. And although the continued 
supremacy of British Government and authoi^ 
ity, and the presence of British military and 
naval forces, have so far secured the lands to 
the white owners, and prevented general con- 
fiscation of property, and massacre of the few 
whites, still Jamaica and the other British 
West Indian colonies are totally ruined in re- v 
gard to industry, production, and all social 
blessings. 

If required, or suitable to the occasion, 1 
could quote at greater length than all this 
article besides, testimony of facts, and statis- 
tical and ofiicial reports, going to show the 
utter ruin of industry and production in Hay- 
ti and the British colonies — the unquestion- 
able results of the suppression of slavery. 
Many of such facts may be seen in the " Pre- 
sent State of Hayti," written by James Frank- 
lin, an intelligent Englishman, and former 
resident — in Bigelow's "' Notes on Jamaica " — 
and extracts from official reports; to the British 
Parliament, and from British (and anti-slave- 
ry) writers, inserted in Bledsoe's " Liberty 
and Slavery." I will give here, merely as ex- 
amples, the following few short passages: 

The sugar exported from St. Domingo, now 
Hayti, in"l789, was 672,000,000 lbs.; in 1806, 
it was 47,516,531 lbs.; in 1825, it was 2,020 
lbs.; and in 1832, none. Franklin (whose 
book appeared as far back as 1810, even then) 
said: "There is every reason to apprehend 
that it (Hayti) will recede into irrecoverable 
insignificance, poverty, and disorder." 

Bigeiow, a Northern Abolitionist and negro- 
philist, says of Jamaica in 1850: "Capablej 
as it is, of producing almost everything, and 
actually producing nothing which might not 
become a staple with a proper application 
of capital and skill, its inhabitants are misera- 
bly poor, and daily sinking deeper and deeper 
into the utter helplessness of abject want. 
Shipping has deserted her ports, her magnifi- 
cent sugar and coffee plantations are running 
to weeds, her private dwellings are falling to 
decay, the comforts and luxuries which belong 
to industrial prosperity have been cut oft', one 
by one, from her inhabitants, and the day, I 
think, is at hand when there will be none ' 
left to represent the wealth, intelligence, and 
hospitality for which the Jamaica planter was ^ 
once distinguished." Henry Carey, another 
Northern and anti-slavery writer, says : " It is 
impossible to read Mr. Bigelow's volume with- 
out arriving at the conclusion that the free- 
dom granted to the negro has had little effect, 
except that of enabling him to live at the ex- 
pense of the planter so long as anj'thirg re- 
mained. Sixteen years of freedom did not ap- 
pear, to its author, to have "advanced the dig- 
nity of lab©r, or of the laboring classes, one 
particle, while it had ruined the proprietors of 



19 



the land." Yet, while all Bigelow's facts go 
to prove these evils to be the result of the in- 
curable indolence and improvidence of the 
freed negroes, so inveterate is his negrophilisra 
that he ascribes their indolence and degrada- 
tion to the continued residence of the few re- 
maining whites, and looks to the removal of 
the latter as the proper remedy. And, in an- 
ticipating this future event, and the benefit of 
an unmixed negro population in the British 
West Indies, he also, with all complacency, and 
■without any intimation of objection on his 
part, supposes that these islands will tlien form 
a portion of the United States — and, as must 
be inferred, as a jiart of their improved con- 
dition, must necessarily then be represented 
in Congress by negro delegates. 

"The finest land in the world," says Bige- 
low, " may be had at any price, and almost for 
the asking." Labor "receives no compensa- 
tion, and the product of labor does not seem 
to know how to find its way to market." 

Mr. Robert Baird, A. M., (quoted by Profes- 
sor Bledsoe,) is an Englishman, and, like Bige- 
low, a strong approver of the previous eman- 
cipation of the slaves in the English colonies; 
and, like Bigelow, while he arrays numerous 
strong facts to show the ruinous results of that 
act, he ascribes the evil, not to the act itself, 
but to the want of some further supposed 
measure? of reform. He says: .• 

"Let any one who thinks that the extent 
and clamor of the complaint [of the former 
planters and proprietors] exceeds the magni- 
tude of the distress which has called it forth, 
go to the West Indies and judge for himself 
Let him see, with his own eyes, the neglected 
and abandoned estates, the uncultivated fields, 
fast hurrying back into a state of nature — the 
dismantled and silent machinery, the crumb- 
ling walls, and deserted mansions, which are 
familiar sights in most of the West Indian 
colonies. Let him, then, transport himself to 
the Spanish Islands of Porto Rico and Cuba, 
and witness the life and activity which in 
these ^ave colonies prevail. Let him observe 
for himself the activity of the slavers, the im- 
provements daily making in the cultivation of 
the fields, and tlie processes carried on at the 
sugar mills, and the general indescribable air 
of thriving and prosperity which surrounds 
the whole," <fec. 

The degradation of British Guiana since, 
and because of, emancipation, as shown in the 
Parliamentary and other ofticial reports, is still 
worse. But I will quote no more, except a 
passage of general comment from the British 
historian, Alison: "The negroes," says he, 
"who, in a state of slavery, were comfortable 
and prosperous beyond any peasantry in the 
world, and rajiidly approaching the condition 
of the most opulent serfs of Europe, have 
been, by an act of emancipation, irreti-ievably 
consigned to a state of barbarism." Yet, even 
with this admission, I j)reswme that Alison, 
like every other Englishman of distinction, 
and of high reputation as an author or states- 
man, (excepting Carlyle onlj',) is an enemy of 
negro slavery, and a denouncer of the ini(juity 
of slaveholding. With all this present una- ; 



nimity of opposition to, and violent denuncia- 
tion of, African slavery, the prediction may be 
ventured, that a change of opinion is about to 
take place. Reason and truth will not much 
longer be kept out of sight by pre;judiced and 
ignorant fanaticism, even in England and the 
Northern American States. 

But with such proofs of entire failure of the 
emancipation scheme "in the British colonies, 
and with thousands of like facts that can be 
adduced from statistical and official reports, 
or testified by unimpeachable and intelligent 
witnesses, so besotted and blind is fanaticism, 
and so stronglj' does it cling to its first errors, 
and reject all light and truth, that a few men 
have dared to testify and to publish, that the 
experiment has been eminently successful — 
that the lands had increased in price and in 
production — the negroes were industrious — 
even their former proprietors were benefitted 
and content, and that everything had been 
improved. J. J. Gurney, of England, first pub- 
lished an elaborate report of such false state- 
ments, alleged to be on his personal examina- 
tion ; and his pamphlet was largelj' circulated, 
by anti-slavery advocates in the United 
States. Even within the last few months, the 
same general assertions were made by a speak- 
er, without contradiction, in a public meeting 
in one of the Northern cities. This statement 
was matched by, if not copied from, the fol- 
lowing, which was republished in the "African 
Repositorj'," the organ of the Colonization So- 
ciety in this country, without comment, or ex- 
pression of even a doubt: 

"The British West Indies. — At a meeting 
in London to take measures to present an ap- 
propriate testimonial to Dr. Livingstone, the 
African traveler, Mr. Montgomeiy Martin 
made the following statement: 'He had re- 
cently visited the West Indies to ascertain if 
the emancipation of the slaves had produced 
ruin there. He found there a free, happy, and 
pi'osperous population, (hear, hear;) and 
speaking commercially, the West Indies now 
yield more rum, sugar, and other produce, than 
they had ever done diu'ing the existence of 
slavery, (hear, hear.) . Since the abolition of 
slavery in the West Indies, not a drop of blood 
was shed, not a single crime was committed — 
nor was there destruction of property thi-ough- 
out the whole of the West Indies." (Cheers.)-— 
N. Y. Col. Jour. 

Robespierre, in the French Convention, 
when urging the emancipation of the slaves 
in St. Domingo, and in answer to ))rediction3 
of opponents of the ruin that would follow, 
uttered tlie memorable sentiment, "Perish the 
colonies, rather than sacrifice one iota of our 
principles ! " The Northern Abolitionists, our 
fellow-citizens and political "brethren," con- 
tinue to reassert, in effect, Robesjiiei-re's atro- 
cious declaration, after they now well know, 
what their great exemplar, the bloody Robes- 
pierre, did not know, the wide-spread ruin 
and destruction that would follow the practi- 
cal establishment of their dogma and purpose 
of negro emanciiiation. Their procedure says, 
louder than words could do, "Perish the 
wealth and all production of the Southern 



20 



states, with all that refines, improves, and dig- 
nifies mankind within their bounds; perish 
there, the white race, men, women, and babes, 
by massacre, so that the negro slaves shall be 
freedl Perish even Northern manufactures, 
commerce, and wealth, if dependent on the 
products of Southern slavery — and perish the 
industrjf, the comforts, the civilization, the 
morals, religion of the slaves, and even the 
slaves themselves, if to be necessarily caused 
by their receiving the gift of freedom! " 

Tke alleged greatest atrocities of negro slavery 

considered in comparison with those of free 

society, or class slavery. 

The main objections of the opposers and de- 
nouncers of slavery may be stated under two 
general heads, viz: first, the great injustice 
and wrong of subjecting human beings, our 
natural equals, to slavery, and of the so hold- 
ing them and their posterity ; and second, the 
hardships and sufferings of the persons sub- 
jected to and held in slaverj'. The numerous 
other objections urged are incidental, and of 
minor importance to these. 

The alleged injustice and wrong-doing of 
producing or maintaining the relations and 
opposite conditions of master and slave, have 
already been here considered in another con- 
nection. If it is unjust and wrongful, it is in 
the same manner as property, wealth, and po- 
litical rank and power, in almost every civi- 
lized and even free country, are possessed by 
a small number of the people, while the far 
greater number are without land or other pro- 
perty, without political power, or, perhaps, 
even political rights, and with scarcely a hope 
of ac(jairing either, in a whole life of unceas- 
ing toil and privation. Except some of the 
most rabid socialists and disorganizers, as 
Proudhon, who declares all " property to be 
robbery," no English ])hilanthropist, or Koi-th- 
ern anti-slavery writer, has denounced all he- 
reditary magistrates and rulers as usurpers, 
and all propertj'-holders as unjust and fraudu- 
lent possessors — and declared that both these 
classes of usurpers and robbers ought to be 
deprived of their acquisitions for the benefit 
of the niuUitude of destitute persons, whose 
equal rights had been thereby violated. The 
abstract right of all mankind to personal 
liberty, and the right to equal participation in 
the government, and of property in land, (if no 
more,) stand upon precisely equal and like 
grounds. The end obtained by each of these 
several violations of natural and equal rights, 
or claims, is the same — the general and great 
benefit of the whole community, and of all 
mankind — even including (and especially as to 
personal slavery) the class least favored in the 
distribution of rights and property. The pos- 
sessor of hereditary authority, in free Eng- 
land, or of authority delegated by hereditary 
rulers, either civil or militarj^ lay or clerical, 
is to the poor and starving laborer, as much a 
fraudulent and forcible usurper of the power 
and property of which the laborer is entirely 
destitute, as the slaveholder is unjustly depriv- 
ing his slave of any right to freedom. Yet, 
just as is this comparison, no English monarch- 



ist or Northern capitalist seems to have 
thought of the parity of the different cases. 

The second great objection to negro slavery 
is the severe and cruel treatment of the slaves, 
and the great sufferings incidental to the con- 
dition of every slave. It is a certain and de- 
plorable truth, that wherever men have power 
over others, there will occur cases of un- 
just and sometimes cruel exercise of power. 
Such cases occur even where the superior in- 
dividual, or class, has no interest to serve in op- 
pressing the inferior ; and they are much more 
frequent, if not general, when the unjust op- 
pression of the inferior, and subject, is advanta- 
geous to the superior person or class. Thus there 
are many (though still exceptional) cases of 
slaveholders in these Southern States maltreat- 
ing their slaves, although such procedure is 
generally opposed to, and never promotive oi, 
the master's interest. And so in the Northern 
States and in J^ugland, there are many (yet 
also exceptional) cases of husbands using their 
superior power to maltreat, and even to tor- 
ture or kill wives — parents their young chil- 
dren — and adult children their parents. But 
with all these cases, and many of them of 
horrible cruelty and atrocity, the relations of 
masters to their personal slaves, as well as of 
parents to children, and husbands to wives, are 
much more generally kind, just in intention, 
and beneficient. The owner of negro slaves 
is interested in obtaining from them the great- 
est amount of continued useful lal>or and ser- 
vice ; and also, (and especially, at their present 
high prices,) to have the property continued 
by the preservation of health and long life, 
and increased in successive generations. These 
objects, it is manifest, must be opposed, if not 
defeated entirelj', by the slaves being too 
severely worked, or being subjected to other 
suffering from want of sufficient food, and 
other necessaries of life and health. Further: 
capricious and *tyranieal treatment of slaves, 
even though not damaging their bodily ability 
and healtli, would be as detrimental to the 
master's interest, by producing disconte^pt and 
disobedience. Besides these "motives for just 
and kind treatment, addi-essed to the self-inte- 
rest of the master of slaves, there are others 
which appeal even more strongly to the best 
feelings and attributes of man. The intimate 
association of the master and his slaves, throiigh 
years of direction and service — in many cases 
continued from early childhood to death — 
must produce, and does produce, strong and 
mutual feelings of personal regard and attach- 
ment. In very many cases this attachment of 
love has such sway, that the master's kindness 
of feeling overpowers his judgment, and he 
fails to maintain the proper degree of discipline 
and obedience that is necessary for the well- 
being and happiness of the slaves, as well as 
for the profit of the master. The sternest 
master, however deficient in the softer feelings, 
has at least moi;% of personal attachment to 
his own slaves than toother persons unknown 
to, and imconnected with him. And the 
smallest share of this universally existing feel- 
ing of personal affection, is just so much more 
than is felt, or can possibly be felt, by either 



21 



party in any form of class slavery, or of sub- 
jection of labor to capital. Thus, whether 
reasoning a priori from the nature of man, or 
deducing conclusions from existing known 
and gi^neral facts, there are niany and strong 
reasons to induce the owner of domestic slaves 
to be kind in his treatment, and to strive to 
avoid injustice and cruelty. Such are generally, 
and of necessity must be, the general accom- 
paniments and condition of slavery in these 
Southern States, at tiie present, and in recent 
times. But I admit that the case might be 
(and has been elsewhere) very different. 
While England supplied America with African 
slaves, negroes were so cheap in the iSritish 
West Indies, and wherever else slaves were 
then admitted, that the master's self-interest 
was small to preserve his slave's life to old age, 
and no increase by procreation was desired, or 
would have been profitable. It was cheaper 
to buy an adult male negro, than either to 
rear one from infancy, or to maintain his in- 
firm and useless old age. Hence, according to 
human nature, (and just as capitalists in both 
Old and New England now act towards their 
free laborers, or class 'slaves,) self-interest 
generally overcame any promptings of hu- 
manity. It was to the gain of the owners to 
treat their slaves hardly and cruelly, and, ac- 
cordingly, it was so done generally. Neither 
were the pi'omptings of self-interest often 
counteracted by any feeling of attachment to 
the newly imported, brutal, debased, and 
savage African negroes. Moi'eover, most of 
the owners, in the British West India Islands 
were non-residents, and, therefore, were in- 
capable of forming personal attachment to any 
of their unknown slaves. 

This worst and very deplorable condition of 
negro slaves was owing to accidental and extra- 
aeous circumstances, (and maiidy to the greedy 
md linscrupulous avarice of England, minis- 
tered to by the great profits of the slave-trade,) 
ind would have been but temporary and tran- 
aent there, as was the somewhat similar earl}' 
ondition of slavery in Virginia. But the ne- 
cessary hardships of free laboi-ers, and the 
jruel sufferings of class slavery instead of be- 
ng transient, are fixed, and will be increasing 
IS long as the competition for labor, and the 
)ressure of want, shall continue to operate. 
Che class of employers of free labor cannot 
jossibly feel any love or personal attachment 
or their numerous and often changed hire- 
ings. The only rule on which they act (or 
ndeed can act) towards them, as laborers, is 
o obtain from tiiem as much work as possi- 
ly can be perfonued, for as low wages as will 
e taken for such work. This is not even a mat- 
er of choice with the emploj'ers. Tliey have 
heir places in a complicated system of social 
lachinery, and each one is compelled to act 
is required part of the general operation. It 
i often the case that an individual owner and 
irector of a ]>lantation, worked by his negro 
laves, either through his own indolence and 
arelessness, or his too kind indulgence to his 
laves, or both these causes combined, fails to 
btain half of his pro[>er products and income, 
uch neglect and waste of means have often 



led, finally, to thefuin of the proprietor, and, 
consequently, the subsequent sale of the 
slaves. But, more generally, the less extent of 
such errors only causes to the proprietor such 
loss of profit as he can bear without destruction 
of his business, or diminution of his original 
capital. But any such diminution of profit, 
to a great manufacturer or mine owner, would 
be ruinous. The competition for purchasers, 
among great proprietors of manufactories, and 
for the trade of the world, is as keen as is the 
competition for employment among their la- 
borers. Many of such capitalists are as con- 
scientious and humane men as any other em- 
ployers of labor, and they probably perform 
as many acts of charity, as charity, as other 
rich people. But as wages, no employer of 
numerous laborers is able to add to the pit- 
tance that will engage the needed labor, 
though knowing it to be inadequate. A very 
large part of the expense of these great in- 
dustrial operations is the wages of labor. A 
master manufacturer is bound, by the curi'ent 
mai-ket values, to take certain rates of prices 
for his products ; which prices return to him, 
on the general average, but a fair and proper 
profit on his capital and expenses. If, to 
make these sales, and secure this profit, he can 
and does hire his laborers at twenty pence for 
each day's work, he could not add two pence 
to that rate of wages without taking that 
amount out of his own previous and but mod- 
erate profits. He might be sensible that his 
laborers required higher wages to sustain 
health and life, and his feelings of compassion 
and benevolence might strongly urge him to 
make the increase ; but for the great expense 
of labor to be increased to him even by one- 
tenth more than was paid by all his competi- 
tors, could not possibly be done without de- 
struction to his profits, and ruin and speedy 
stoppage to the business. Such a man would 
paj^ his share of tax, under the poor law, for 
aiding to support his and other pauper labo- 
rers, and. besides, might give alms voluntarily 
to the extent of his ability ; but .as an em- 
ployer of laborers, and payer of their wages, 
he would have no choice but to fulfil his hard 
and severe part in the great system of "free 
labor," urged to the utmost by competitioD, 
and by want. 

And precisely in lite manner acts every 
employer of labor, or ptirchaser of the pro- 
ducts of labor. It is the universal law of 
trade, of which no particular departures from, 
or exceptions to, can prevent or affect the 
general operation, that every one will seek to 
hire the lowest priced labor, and to buy the 
lowest priced products of labor. All the 
knowledge of the facts of want and hunger, 
and consequent vice and misery, and all that 
benevolence and charity can feel and wish, 
cannot materially alter or alleviate the work- 
ing to its end of the great law of competition, 
and its deplorable consequences. 

There are but few, even among the most 
fanatical denouncers of negro slavery, who, if 
acquainted with both conditions, would not 
admit that the far greater amount of suff"er- 
ing is to be found in the class which thej? 



22 



falsely term "free laborers." Yet, to remedy, 
or greath' alleviate these certain, permanent, 
and growing distresses of free society, no 
statesma.n lias even attempted ; and, except 
wild and disorganizing socialists, no reformer 
has proposed even visionary means for relief. 
Yet all these statesmen, theoretical reformers, 
and socialists of every sect, who have all the 
horrors of class slavery standing and growing 
under their eyes, neglect its miseries and vic- 
tims to unite in one universal howl of denunci- 
ation of negro slavery in this country — which 
is a far happier condition than that of any 
class of free laborers in England, and the hap- 
piest and best condition in which the negro 
race can possibly be placed. 

Expediency of the permanence of negro slavery, 
and of the extension of the area. 
Assuming as an indisputable fact that God 
has created and designed the negro race to be 
inferior in intellect to the white — that the 
negro possesses in a superior degree the qual- 
ities of docility and obedience, and of ability 
to endure the heat and miasmatic air of trop- 
ical climates, and that he only can safely 
labor in these most fruitful regions of the 
earth — while his feebleness of mind and indo- 
lence of body prevent his voluntary and sus- 
tained labor, even to preserve life — that the 
white man can and does direct, control, and 
compel the labors of the negro beneficially for 
both, an ' best for profitable production, for 
civilization, and for the general well-being of 
the world — I thence deduce the expediency 
and propriety of not only maintaining, and 
preserving inviolate, the existing condition of 
African .slavery, but of its being extended to 



tyranny of their former colonial government. 
Of all tropical and South America, Brazil, . 
which escaped civil war, and Cuba, which has 
continued a Spanish province, only, have ■ 
retained the institution of African slavery. , 
And these two countries only, and certainly 
for that cause, have greatly extended and! 
exceeded their former production, notwith- 
standing all the evils of bad government in 
both these countries, and for Cuba, the most 
horrible political oppression by the mother 
country. From the mongrel races that oc- 
cupy Mexico, Central America, the inmiense 
basins of the Orinoco, the upper Amazon, and 
the La Plata and its tributaries, and which 
are everywhere spreading and maintaining 
desolation over these fair and fertile regions of 
the earth, there is no hope for improvement 
under their present policy, and their miscalled 
free institutions. If any or all of these great 
countries had been subdued, and occupied, and 
governed by men of Anglo-Saxon race, and 
for even the last foity years of their free exist- 
ence had been tilled by negro slaves, there 
would have been as much and as rapid im- 
provement made in population, wealth, and 
greatness, as there has been of actual decline 
and degradation under the different existing 
conditions. And these countries, and their 
inhabitants, will still continue to decline, until 
the only present and sure remedy s'.all be in 
operation. No tropical country, or people, in 
any age, has ever gi-eatly prospered, or been 
raised to a high grade of industry, production, 
refinement, and moral worth, except by the 
aid, and general diffusion of domestic slavery. 
And in modern times, the important and valu- 
able products of sugar and cotton, have no- 
wherever the condition of the earth and its,/where Vjeen great articles of exportation, 



inhabitants would be manifestly improved 
thereby. Nearly all Spanish Amei'ica has 
been degraded, and is now sunk below the 
hope for resuscitation, partly in consequence 
of the previous general mixture of blood of 
the inferior with the superior race — and still 
more because of tlie subsequent extinction of 
slavery, and the end of the former subordina- 
tion of the African and native races to the 
European. With the throwing off the op- 
pressive Spanish yoke, and declaring the 
political independence of all these extensive 
and fruitful colonies of Spain, it was univer- 
sally expected that they would rapidly im- 
prove, and rise, in every attribute of worth 
and greatness. But all these sanguine and 
philanthropic hopes and expectations have 
been miserably and completely disappointed. 
By each of these revolutionary governments, 
miscalled free and republican, negro slavery 
was abolished by law, and equal ]iolitical 
rights decreed to aU. classes of the popula- 
tion. The consequence was an immediate and 
progressive decline of industry and produc- 
tion ; and now, after forty years of political 
independence, general security from foreign 
invaders, and with the possession of (their so 
called) freedom and republican government, 
each and all of these republics are but an- 
archies, more degraded and wretched in every 
respect than when under the oppression and 



except when obtained from the labor of do- 
mestic slaves. 

Causes of the prosperity of the Northern Stateti 
without the aid of slavery. 

It may be objected to the claims here made 
for the superior economy of slave labor in new. 
countries, and wherever labor is scarce and dear, 
that the Northern States of this Confederacy, 
wfthout slavery, have prospered as much and 
(as most have said) much more than the slave- 
holding States. There are sufficient causes of 
all that is well founded in this claim of equal- 
ity or superiority, and for the outward appear-! 
ance of much more than is true. 

The settlers of all the present United States 
brought with them from Europe habits of in- 
dustry and artificial wants, which had been 
produced and cultivated in their ancestors by 
their former, and then extinct, old system of 
slavery. The first colonists of America, though 
settlers in a new country, were an old people, 
with established habits of industry. A cold 
and severe climate, and generally land but 
moderately productive, required and com- 
pelled labor and frugality. To be indolent 
and wasteful would be equivalent to starving 
before the end of the next winter of six months 
duration. Further, the settlers of New Eng- 
land were still more iuTpelled to exertion by 
their religious fanaticism, which had first 



23 



made tliem seek a new home on a barren soil, 
and under a rigorous climate, and prepared 
them to endure any degree of labor and pri- 
vation. Not only the virtues, but the follies 
and the vices nourished by the religion and 
theocratic government of this j^eculiar people, 
served to stimulate effort and labor much 
more than ordinary physical necessities and 
inducements alone would have done. But, in 
addition, the puritan New Englanders availed 
themselves, as much as was serviceable to 
them, not only of African slaves, but of their 
Indian captives, whom they systematically re- 
duced to domestic slavery. And they contin- 
ued to hold their slaves until after the war of 
the Revolution. But in so cold a country, and 
where the products of agricultural labor were 
of so little amount, slave labor was of much 
less value than in countries under opposite 
conditions. As soon as there was even a mod- 
erate supply of free labor, it became cheaper 
to hire such, even at higher rates, for the few 
months onlv when it was available, than to 
maintain a slave throughout the year, and for 
months together of winter, when no agricul- 
tural work could be performed. Hence the 
time for the natural and economical extinc- 
tion of slavery in New England soon arrived. 
And if the masters had not had (and used) 
the resource of selling their slaves to the 
South, they would have emancipated them, 
not for any conscientious scruples, (which now 
BO heavily oppress them in regard to Southern 
slavery,) but for profit. The like reasons and 
causes operated more slowly to extinguish do- 
mestic slavery in the middle Atlantic States; 
and the growing anti-slavery doctrines served 
still more to forward and extend the removal 
of slavery where it had existed, and to forbid 
and prevent its being established in the new 
Northwestern States. The longer and more 
rigorous winters there also prevented regular 
or continuous agricultural laboi-, and would 
have served to detract much from the profits 
of negro slavery, if it had existed there. But 
if both law and fanaticism had not forbidden, 
it would be both profitable and highly benefi- 
cial to use negro slaves to a limited extent in 
all the Northwestern States, and especially for 
house servants. And they would have been 
indispensable, even for agis'cultural labors, de- 
spite the disadvantages of climate, if a supply 
for such service had but been continually fur- 
nished in the hoi'des of destitute Eurwpean 
immigrants, who, of course, all go to these 
States, or newer teiritories. where labor is 
most in demand, and, therefoie, is most highly 
paid for. 

But there are other and stronger reasons for 
the prosperity and success of the Northern 
States. Even after negro slavery was re- 
moved from them, its conlinued existence and 
extension in the Soulhern States served to 
foster and stimulate, and reward the industry 
of the Northern States. Southern products, 



ever since the existence of the Federal consti- 
tution, liave been made tributary to Northern 
navigation, commerce, and manufactures — and 
the tribute has been made more and more 
oppressive to the South, and profitable to the 
North, by means of federal legislation giving 
bounties, direct or indirect, to Northern in- 
dustry, capital, and general interests. It will 
never be knoM'n by the South, nor appreciated 
by the North, how much tribute iias thus 
been paid by Southern industry anct capital, 
(and all derived from the products of negro 
slavery,) to swell Northern profits and wealth, 
until the existing union of the Northern and 
Southern States shall be dissolved. Should 
that contingency occur, then, for the first time, 
will the Northern States have to support 
themselves from their own resources, and 
without the great and unacknowledged aid to 
their wealth derived from the slave labor and 
the products of the South — and they will then 
learn to know the value of all that they have 
lost. 

The intellect of the world coming to the appro- 
val and support of negro slavery. 
The defenders and vindicators of negro 
slaverj' would have nothing to fear for the 
final and complete success of their cau^e, if 
the question were to be decided by reason 
and argument, founded upoii facts and expe- 
rience. But the case is very dift'erent. In 
these United States, the rights and property of 
slaveholders and of the slaveholding States, 
are assailed in every possible manner by the 
opinions and votes, and also the lawless action, 
of the more numerous people of the Northern 
States, dii-ected by ambitious and unscrupulous 
leaders, who excite and array ignorant fanat- 
icism in the Northern States in opposition to 
slavery in the South, merelj' to gain political 
power and rank for themselves. Under this 
great outside pressure of the now powerful 
Northern States, aided by the fanatical or 
pretended philanthropy of England and 
France, it may be, that blind fanaticism, stim- 
ulating and dii-ecting illegal and incendiary 
action, may be able to extinguish slavery, 
(even though in a general extermination of 
the black race in the States where slavery 
now exists,) before good sense, truth, and 
sound reasoning, all of which are now extend- 
ing in influence, shall come to the rescue. 
The existing contest between the defenders 
and the assailants of negro slavery is one in ■ 
which intellect is, or is about to be, arrayed 
on one side, and the brute force of ignorant 
and deluded numbers, on the other. The 
result of the contest will be of vital impor- 
tance to the Southern States, either for weal 
or wo, and, in a very considerable measure, to 
every class and condition of all America and 
Europe, and to the future civilization and wel- 
fare of the world. 



A. I^ F E N D I X . 



THE INFLUENCE OF SLAYERY, OR OF ITS ABSENCE, ON 
MANNERS, MORALS, AND INTELLECT. 

[Extract from an Address to the Virginia State Agricultural Society, read at the First 

Annual Meeting, December 16, 1852, by Edmund Rcffin, President; and then printed by 
order of the Society.] 



» « » » The subject upon ■which I pro- 
pose now to offer my opinions and remarks, 
though not strictly agricultural, is of the high- 
est degree of interest and importance to the 
whole agricultural community of this and the 
other Southern States of the confederacy. 
This is, the influence of the institution of do- 
mestic or individual slavery on manners, intel- 
lect, and moralo, and on the welfare of both 
masters and slaves; and in these respects 
compared to the influence of the slavery of 
class to class, which, in one or other form, 
either now prevails, or soon will occur, in 
every civilized country where domestic slavery 
is not found. 

The institution of domestic slavery, its ef- 
fects, influences and probable consequences, 
constitute the great and all-absorbing subject 
of discussion at the present time — of defensive 
and foo often apologetic argument in the South- 
ern States, and of aggressive and fierce de- 
nunciation throughout the Northern States of 
this confederacy. The subject is as broad and 
varied as it is important. To be fully discus- 
sed it would require consideration in sundry 
aspects, but of which each one may be treated 
separately and distinctly. The expediency 
and rightfulness of slavery may be considered 
either as a «[uestion of religion and morals — 
of public policy and political influence — or of 
domestic economy and influence upon private 
interests and on the habits and manners of so- 
ciety. The former and chief branches of the 
general question have been already discussed 
by able writers, to whose arguments I could 
add no light, even if this occasion permitted 
so wide a range of discussion. But the latter- 
named branch has had less attention, or de- 
fence, on our part ; and as its consideration is 
intimately connected with agriculture and ag- 
ricultural interests, in this connection mainly, 
and as suitable to this occasion, I will now 
offer some remaks upon the influence of the 
existing institution of African slavery, on the 
social qualities, manners, ftnd welfare of the 
agricultural class in these Southern States. 



This one and limited relation of sjavery to 
agricultural interests, requires a still further 
division, into 1st: The question of the com- 
parative pecuniary profit of slave labor, or of 
its absence and its substitutes ; and 2d : The 
question of social and moral advantages and 
disadvantages. The first of these subdivis- 
ions, important as it is to our interests, and 
certain and easy as would be the demonstration 
of the result, cannot be here discussed. Th« 
superior pecuniary profit of slave-labor is a 
subject of statistics, of calculation and detail, 
which would be inadmissible at this time and 
place. But it is not required to reach the 
proof through such a course of argument. I 
may assume as granted and unquestionable, 
the fact almost universally admitted in the 
Southern States, that slave-labor is in our cir- 
cumstances, more profitable to the employers, 
and to agricultural interests, than could be 
any possible substituted labor. Dismissing, 
then, this important suljdivision of this sub- 
ject as settled, I will direct my observations 
to private interest'^ other than pecuniary, as 
aff'ected by the influence of the institution of 
slavery. 

It has been a fertile subject of declamation 
and denunciation among the opposers of 
slavery, that the existence of domestic slavery 
operated to corrupt manners and morals. 
Every wide-spread and pervading institution, 
however beneficial in general eft"ect, must also 
have some adverse effect or influence in minor 
points, or exceptional cases. This is true in 
regard to every great institution of public 
economy, government, morals, or even reli- 
gion. He is a poor reasoner who judges not 
by general rules, but by the exceptions. And 
that is the mode of argument generally adopt- 
ed to oppose and denounce the institution of 
slavery. The so-called facts or premises, if 
not either entirely false and impossible, as is 
generally the case, are but rare exceptions to 
general rules. 

The great economical objections to slave 
labor ar« these : The compulsion of authority. 



and the fear of punishment, to the slave, are 
less potent than the pressure of want, and de- 
sire of gain, stimulating free laborers. Hence 
slaves labor less assiduously than necessitous 
free laboi'ers. Next, with all this loss of effort 
still the labor of slaves is so profitable that 
their owners are tempted by their prosperity 
and the ease of obtaining a living, to be them- 
selves indolent and wasteful. These are ef- 
fects which every where follow similar causes. 
Their existence is certainly a great detraction 
from what might otherwise be the profits of 
Southern agricultural industry and capital. 
But when this detraction is urged (as is con- 
tinuall}' done) by the opposers of slavery to 

Erove the evils of the system, they are in fact 
ut asserting the truths that the labors of the 
Southern slaves, in general, are lighter, and 
yet the profits of tlieir owners greater, than in 
regard to the corresponding classes of laborers 
and capitalists in Europe or the Northern 
States. Northern farmers who are now thriv- 
ing by greater economy of labor and products, 
would become bankrupt if subjected to the 
waste of both, which is general throughout 
the Southern States. These^evils are the effects 
certainly of slavery — but effects which are 
the strongest evidence of the greater benefits 
of the system, and of the falsehood of the 
charges against it, as a question of profit for 
the proprietors, or of oppression and sutt'ering 
of the slaves. 

Much is certainly wanting among the agri- 
cultural class of the Southern States, in educa- 
tion and mental culture ; and great have been 
and still remain the obstacles to the higher 
attainment of these benefits. This also is one 
of the attendant minor evils of the institution 
of slavery, caused by the necessary dispersed 
residences of the superior class of the popula- 
tion. Still, in no other class of cultivators of 
the soil, whether in this young and great con- 
federacy, or in old Europe, can there be found, 
in proportion to numbers, so much of mental 
improvement, enlargement of views, and gene- 
ral information, as ii^ the Southern and slave- 
holding States. In no other agricultural class, 
throughout the world, are better nurtured, or 
80 weil preserved, the purity of all the domes 
tic and famit}' virtues of daughters, wives, and 
mothers. To the most intelligent and fair- 
judging of foreign travellers and visitors to 
our Southern country, who have had opportu- 
nities to observe domestic manners and coun- 
ti'y society — whether such visitors were na- 
tives of Europe or of our Northern and slavery- 
hating States, nothing has seemed more mark- 
ed and peculiar than facts observed, which 
were but illustrations of the propositions 1 
have asserted, and necessary results of our 
peculiar social position. Yet it has not oc- 
curred to these intelligent strangers, who have 
admired and eulogised the domestic manners 
and refinement ot the Southern country popu- 
lation, that the main cause, the essential 
foundation of the permanence of the peculiar 
merits which they witnessed with surprise and 
admiration, are due to the institution of Afri- 
can slavery. It is this institution, which, by 
confining the drudgery and brutalizing effects 



of continued toil, or menial service, to the in- 
ferior .race, (and of which the subjection, not- 
withstanding, has served gi-eatly for its benefit 
and improvement,) gives to the su]ierior race 
leisure and other means to improve mind, taste, 
and manners. In countries where domestic 
slavery does not exist, (or some equivalent 
condition of society, such as I will advert to,) 
and where the owners of the soil and all mem- 
bers of their families are necessarily laborers 
in the lowest departments or most degrading 
menial services, there may.be much industry, 
greater economy and frugality, and possibly, 
(under the peculiarly favorable, though tran- 
sient circumstances of a newly settled territo- 
ry and cheap and fertile lands,) there may be 
eveu much general accumulation of profit and 
of wealth. But, nevertheless, such a popula- 
tion, of necessity, must be, or in a few genera- 
tions will become, rude in manners, and great- 
ly deficient in refinement of feeling and culti- 
vation of mental and social qualities. No one 
appreciates more highly than myself the ad- 
vantages to a nation of producing and accumu- 
lating wealth by the individual members of 
the great community, and especially, as the 
greatest public gain, the increase of agricultu- 
ral production and riches. To advocate and 
urge the forwarding of the latter results is the 
especial object of my present service and em- 
ployment, as it has been one of the most im- 
portant objects of all my public efforts and 
labors. Still, may God forbid that we should 
deem the accunmlation of wealth — even if 
from its most beneficial and best possible 
source, the fertilization and culture of the 
soil — as compensation for the loss or deteriora- 
tion of the mental and moral qualities of 
Southern men, and more especially of Southern «^ 
women I And if brought to the hard necessi- 
ty of choosing between the two conditions, 
with their opposite disadvantages, I would not 
hesitate a moment to prefer the entire existing 
social, domestic, and industrial conditions of 
these slaveholding States, with all the now 
existing evils of indolence and waste, and 
generally exhausting tillage and declining 
fertility, to the entire conditions of anj- other 
country on the face of the globe. Our coun- 
try population would lose largely in grade by 
exchanging conditions with the industi-ious, 
economical, and thrifty Flemish farmers — long 
and deservedly celebrated for the excellence 
of their agriculture, and who yet, beyond the 
routine of their regular work, are almost as 
uninformed as their most ignorant hired labo- 
rers. Far worse would be a change to the 
condition of the proprietary class of France, 
among whom land generally is so minutely 
subdivided, that its possession is usually ac- 
compained by all the toils and privations of 
day-laborers to the farmer and his family, and 
of course by the ignorance, coarseness of man- 
ners, and moral degradation, which are the 
necessary consequences of such unceasing toil, 
exposure, and privations. In Britain, it is 
true, that with much of gross ignorance and 
rudeness of manners among the lower class of 
farmers, and with all the agricultural laborers 
there are, in the higher classes, both of pro« 



prietors and tenants of lands, many persons of 
high intellectual attainments. But this ex 
ception to the general rule is owing to the 
almost universal mode of tenure of the landed 
property in that country, and the usual sepa- 
ration of its possession, as capital, by men of 
■wealth, and leisure, and the conducting of the 
cultivation by tenants upon rent. Even many 
tenants are men of wealth, who find it 
more proiitable, as tenants, to conduct very 
large agricultural operations and capital, 
than the being proprietors of small farms, 
and upon a necessarily very limited .scale 
of operations. These causes are there fur 
ther aided in operation by the high price 
of land, which keeps it in the possession of 
the wealthy and educated, and also the great 
plenty and cheapness, and degradation, of 
agricultural labor — much cheaper in that 
thickly populated country than our slave la 
bor. Of tliese several conditions of Brilisl 
agriculture, serving to improve and refine the 
higher rural or agiicultural classes, and only 
the higher c]as:~es, not one exists in this coun- 
try, or possibly can occur for centuries to come, 

In the Northern and Korthwestern iStates 
of the confederacy, there are also to be found, 
(as yet, though they must certainly and soon 
disappear,) many proprietors and cultivators 
of land who are men of education and intelli- 
gence, and whose wives and daugliters have a 
high degree of refinement of maimers. But 
in nearly every such case, it will be fouml 
that this intelligence and retinement were de- 
rived from some previous and dift'eient tiain- 
ing and position; and that these qualities 
have been so far retained in agricultural life 
by the laige agricultural profits and accumu- 
lations of wealth available in a newly settled 
country. But even now, the general condition 
of the agricultural class in these non-slavf- 
holding states is much lowered, and tending 
to what must be hereafter a state of general 
and deej) degradation, in intellectual and so- 
cial qualities. And with them, the degrada- 
tion will not stop when as low as that of the 
tenantiy of England, or of the boors who reap 
rich harvests from the fat soil of Belgium. 
The comparative poverty of soil iji the older 
^Northern states, and the general and repeated 
divisions of property therein, by inheritance, 
indicate a future condition of the proprietois 
more like to that of the wretched and igno- 
rant j)ropiietary class of France. 

Even now, it is comjiaratively a rare case 
in the Isorthcrn States to find, what is so com- 
mon in the Southern, a highly intelligent man, 
■with a well educated and refined family, all 
natives of and still residing in the country, 
and Vjclonging strictly to the agricultural class. 
Such persons liave little inducement to remain 
in (aiid still less to commence) country life 
and agricultural employments in the Noitheiii 
States. And sliould aiiy such, perchance, be 
80 situated, they must either abandon their 
pursuits and their locality, or be content that 
their children shall sink to the geiieial level 
of the surrounding residents, in coarse man- 
ners aiid uncultivated intellect. A suflBcient 
proof of the working of this law of circum- 



stances is presented continually to the world 
in the contrast of the representation in Con- 
gress from the rural districts of the Northern 
and Southern States respectively. The most 
distinguished men, and especially statesmen, 
of the South, have as often (at least) been na- 
tives and continued residents of the country 
as of towns — and in talent and in numbers 
they have far exceeded all from the North in 
our public councils. In the Northern States 
there are, indeed', many men of the highest 
talents, education, and learning — and, it may 
be, in the latter respects exceeding any in the 
South, because of the greater advantages of- 
fered by great cities for literary and scientific 
pursuits. But these great or learned men are 
either produced in or gathered to the great 
cities only. They are men who have acquired 
their just renown either .iB lawyers, physicians, 
divines, or professors in scientific and literary 
institutions. All of gi-eat intellectual power 
that now exists in the gieat States of Massa- 
chusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania, is to 
be found in their populous cities only — and 
almost exclusively in their respective great 
capitals. Some truly great men may be (and 
sometimes are) turnished from these cities to 
aid the public councils. But never does one 
such come from all the twenty-fold greater 
country and village constituencies — which 
even when disposed thus to honoi- the highest 
talent, (which is not often the case, either in 
town or country — North or South) — could not 
possibly find among themselves any high 
talent to honor. The difference between the 
intellectual cop.difions of the Northern and 
Southern agricultural population, is the cause 
of the usual long existing and well known 
commanding influence in the Federal Govern- 
ment of the Southern States, through their 
representatives, in whatever measures of na- 
tional policy are directed by wisdom, or in- 
tellect, or for the benefit of general interests. 
But we are now much the weakest in votes; 
and in whatever of public policy is coimected 
witli sectional interests, frr still baser private 
selt-iiiteiest, superiorintellecthas no influence, 
and we arc governed by the brute force and 
cupidity of superior numbers. 

The ]icculiar defects of ^Northern agricul- 
tural labor in its influence on social and do- 
mestic relationf-, do not (as yet) forbid great 
pecuni;iry success in agricultural pursuits. In- 
deed, when no far-reaching intellectual power 
is lequired to devise or direct a system of cul- 
tuic or improvement, or while enough of such 
direction, derived froni former influences, yet 
remains in operati<jn, the returns of agricul- 
tural capital aie even increased by the exist- 
ing condition of tilings in the Nortliern States. 

A farmer or planter of the South, not rich, 
but in iiide[)endent and comftirtable circum- 
stances, gives a [portion of his time to social 
and mental occuiiatii^m. Berhaps his whole 
/lyect in seeking such relaxation is present en- 
oyment. But the final residt is not the less 
m])rovement of mind and manners. His sons 
and daughters grow up under these advan- 
tages and influences of social commimicatiou. 
And, if, in the end, because of such indul- 



gences of a family, even though moderately 
and properly enjoj-ed, there may be less money 
nccniiuilated, there will be acquired other 
values much more than compensating the dif- 
ference of pecuniarj' gains. Ehvood P'isher, (in 
his excellent lecture on "The North and the 
South,") has observed most trul}- that the or- 
dinary social intercourse of the people of the 
South serves admirably as a school of instruc- 
tion. Quoting by memor}' only from this pro- 
found thinker and able "advocate of Southern 
institutions and rights, I am not sure whether 
I am indebted directly to his expressions, or 
indirectly-, (by deduction from them) for the 
opinion whicii will be here added — that his 
Boeial school, in its opei'ation for improving 
manners and morals, for enlarging observation 
and thought, and for affording general and 
useful information, is far better than the much 
lauded common scliool education of the New 
England States. Spelling, reading, and com- 
mon arithmetic are indeed necessary and ex- 
cellent fiist steps in the pursuit of useful in- 
struction and knowledge.' But he who goes 
no farther in the pursuit, might as well have 
not moved at all. 

A farmer of New York or Pennsylvania, in 
like moderate, but independent circumstances 
as to amount of property to those just sup 
posed for the Southerner, would be compelled 
to be one of his own continual laborers. Ilis 
■wife would be the most unceasing drudge on 
the farm. His sons, and not less his daughters, 
■would be brought up to continued labor in 
the lowest and most repulsive employments, 
end without any improving social intercourse, 
because its cost could not be afforded. Under 
such circumstances, aided by the usual accom- 
paniments of industry', frugality, and parsimo- 
nious expenditure, wealth may and probably 
■will be increased. But t''e possessors will 
seek and fjid nearly all their objects and pleas- 
ures in such accumulation, and they, or the 
next generation, will descend as much in re- 
finement and intellect, as the stock of wealth 
may be increased. Such a proprietor, in mere 
money valuation, is just so much the richer 
aa the value of the wages of hin)self, his wife, 
and his children, ai day-laboi-ers on the farm, 
or servants in the house. A life of continued, 
moderate, and regular labor, is not a life of 
pain. When encouraged by the prospect, and 
rewarded by the fruition of gain, it becomes 
a life of pleasure. Thus the accumulation of 
■wealth, by an industrious Northern farmer, 
does not usually induce any intermission of his 
early labors, or change the habits, labors, or 
training of his children. When he may have 
acquired ^30,000 worth of property, he con- 
tinues to Tabor as steadily, and to live nearlj- 
as rudely, as when under the pressure of his 
early poverty. Ilis son still drives his father's 
■wagon or his hogs to market — in no way dis- 
tinguished in appearance or habits from the 
Other hired laborers. His wife is still the 
most laborious domestic drudge. His daugh- 
ters have no improving society, and their daily 
and continuous employments are those of me- 
nial servants — whose services it ■would be too 
costly to hire. 



This is the general condition to which agri- 
cultural society and manners must tend, are 
tending, and have already readied to great 
extent, in the older nonslaveholding States. 
This is the condition from which we are saved, 
and inuneasurably exalted, by the subjection 
and slavery of an inferior race. The superior 
race here is truly free. In the so-called free ^' 
countries, the far greater number of the supe- 
rior race is, in effect, enslaved, and thereby 
degraded to a condition suitable only for a 
race made inferior by natiu'e. There exist* 
slaver}-, or the subjection of man to man, in 
every country under the sun, except, perhaps, 
the most barbarous and ignorant. In these 
Southern States we have the slavery of indi- 
vidual to individual, and of a naturally infe- 
rior to a naturally .superior race; which, of 
all, is the condition best for both masters and 
slaves. In the so-called free countries, in ad- 
dition to the sometimes most oppressive inle 
of a despotic and grinding government — or it 
may be under tree constitutioiial government — 
there i-s the slavery of class to class — of the 
starving laborers to the paying employers. 
Hunger and cold are the most exacting of all 
task-masters. The victims of hunger and cold 
are always, and of necessity, slaves to their 
wants, and through them, to those who only 
can supply their wants. The great argument 
urged by English and Northern advocates for 
the abolition of our system of slavery, (while 
totally regardless of their own,) is that hired 
labor is clieaper than slave labor. And this 
is imquestionably true, as to both Old Eng- 
land and New England, and all other coun- 
tries where the toriiierly existing domestic 
slavery has been abolished, because (and only 
because) it had ceased to be the most profita- 
ble to the slaveholders. Whenever continued 
severe suffering from lumger and cold, and 
the number of the sufferers, compel the desti- 
tute class to compete eagerly with each other 
in lowering the wages of their labor to obtaia 
bread, then the payment for such labor of so- 
called free men iiocessarily becomes cheaper 
than would be the support of a domestic slave. 
Of course, if domestic slavery then remained 
in that country, the owners of slaves would 
hasten to get rid of them, and to em]>loy, in- 
stead, the cheaper laborers furnished and 
tasked and driven by hunger and cold. Thus, 
and for these reasons, acted our English ances- 
tors, when manumitting their white slaves. 
Thus, and still better for their own interest, 
did our Noithern brethren. For when con- 
vinced that domestic slavery was too costly 
in their wintry region, they first sold their 
negro slaves to the South, and while thereaf- 
ter avoiding their costly use, they continued, 
as long as permitted by law. to "steal" new 
supplies from Africa to sell to the Southera 
States. If the former Southern demand for 
Africans still existed, and the African slave- 
trade was open b}- law — or if it were safe and 
profitable to violate the now prohibitory 
law — enough of our Nortiiern bielhren wouM 
be now as ready as ever to supply the demand. 
And if their access to the coast of Africa was 
prevented, they would be as willing, (if safe 



ana proiuauie, j lo Buj)[)iy aii uue ouiuii wiin 
slavee, by kidnaj)piiig the subjects of their 
now much desired ally, the negro Emperor of 
Hayti. 

Nearly all of the mauj' vessels which have 
been engaged in the African slave-trade, in 
violation of the prohibitory laws of the United 
States, wei'e fitted out for that purpose from 
Northern ports and by Northern capital, and 
■were manned by Northern crews. This trade, 
since being ]irohibited and made piracy by 
our laws, has been carried on to supply slaves 
to Cuba and Biazil, with incomparably more 
inhumanity and cruelty, than attended tiie 
formerly legalized and regulated traffic. From 
time to time we have seen annoimced the de- 
tection of sundry vessels or persons engaged 
in this now illegal and atrocious business of 
torture and murder in the sea voyage; and 
legal proceedings have often been commenced 
ag.ainst the supposed ofl'enders in the North- 
ern cities to which they respectively belonged. 
But in not one such case have I ever heard of 
the conviction, followed by due punishment, 
of any of these worst of criminals. And when 
such detection of these acts of legal piracy 
are announced in Northern newspapers, it is 
usually done in as few words as would serve 
for any other commercial occurrence of inno- 
cent or legal character. Yet, besides the ille- 
gality of the trade, any one such voyage, 
made by the order and funds of merchants of 
a Northern city, would furnish more true facts 
of suffering, crime, and horror, than could 
possibly occur among all the slaves in the 
Southern Stales in the same length of time. 
No furious, popular, and philanthropic indig- 
nation has been aroused against these detected 
pirates; neither the crews and their (ounn.an- 
dei-s, nor the ricii capitalists, who were the 
owners and real traders, torturers, and mur- 
derers. The great gain of the trade seems to 
serve as a veil and excuse for its deep iiuquity. 
D'Wolf, who was one of the great slave-trading 
capitalists of Rhode Island, (while the trade 
was yet legal,) was not, therefore, the less a 
leading man of that State — as is evident from 
his having been subsequently elected by its 
Legislature to the Senate of the United States. 
If any such Afiican slave-trader had lived in 
the Southern States, all his wealth would not 
have lifted him to a respectable position; and 
he could not have obtained the lowest office, 
from either people or Government, as readily 
as did his compeer of Rhode Island attain the 
highest official station, and, I suppose, the 
highest estiniaiion, in slavery-hating and pu- 
ritanical New England. 

There are still other kinds of slavery besides 
those produced by force, and by want and 
suffering. General .ignorance leads to the 
corruption of a people, and of subjection of 
mind to mind. And this kind of slavery, as 
it is in eti'ect, tending to the most awful polit- 
ical and national evils, is alreadj' growing rap- 
idly in the so-called free Northern States. It 
is in their circumstances — of the land culti- 
vated and owned by an unenlightened and 
still deteriorating rural j)opulation — of large 
«ities, in Avhich, with a few men of highest 



lEiieiieci/uai 



powers, or pupujur imiuciiv;^, 

there is collected an enormously predomina- 
ting number of ignorant, needy, and unprin- 
opled men — when a very large proportioi^ 
of the population of these cities is composed, 
of newly arrived foreigners, often vicious and 
turbulent, and necessarily unacquainted with 
the principles of free government, and unused 
to freedom in any form — I say, it is certain, 
in such circumstances as thete, that the body 
of the people will be directed, governed, and 
in effect enslaved by a few master-minds — and 
these minds generally acting solely for the 
promotion of base self-iiiterest and personal 
aggrandizement. No safe-guards in written 
constitutions can preserve such a people from 
being made the tools and slaves of able politi- 
cal knaves and iinscrupulous demagogucF. 
With such po|)ulation of both towns and coun- 
try — with such influences at work, and their 
tendencies — with such unprincipled leaders 
and managers, and such followers — in the 
great State of New Yoi-k, political liberty, in 
effect, is already at an end; and individual 
property, and even life, are unsafe. If the 
doors of every dwelling-house in the Southern 
country were left niglitly without locks, or 
bolts, and if every slave on each farm had 
full command of deadly weapons, (and both 
such circumstances, in effect, are I'eal in innu- 
merable and continuing eases,) our property 
and our lives would be much safer from any 
attempts thereon by our slaves, than soon 
will be the property and lives of the rich 
people of New Tork from their destitute fel- 
low-citizens, notwithstanding all the protec- 
tion afforded by the constitution and laws of 
their nominal free government. Indeed, the 
beginning of this terrible consummatiorf is 
alrfady clear!}' indicated in tiie successful pro- 
gress of the anti-rent-paying combination and 
movement of the State of New York. For 
many years, numerous occupiers of rented 
lands have openly and avowedly leagued to 
withhold the payment of the rents due to the 
proprietors, and yet hold to the land. The 
laws have been trampleil u]>on by this feloni- 
ous league, and the decrees of courts frus- 
trated or silenced. The agents of the pro- 
prietors and creditors have been outrageously 
maltreated, (as would have been th<^]iiinci- 
pals, had they dared to appear,) and the offi- 
cers of justice, when attempting to enforce 
legal processes, have been resisted by ur i g, 
and in some cases have been murdered by 
these detiers of the laws. Growing more 
powerful and bold witli time and success, 
these anti-renters have assinned a political 
(losition and organization, and thus exeicise 
great influence in state elections. And as a 
crowning act of triumph, the}' were enabled 
to secure the election of a candidate for the 
Chief Magisti'ftcy, upon the undeistood en- 
gagement of that eandi<latc that he would 
prostitute his pardoning [)ower as governor, 
to dischai-ge from the State's prison some of 
the most desperate felons of the anti-rent 
party, who by rare chance had been convicted 
and sentenced to punishment in that confine- 
ment Whether this corrupt and most vile 



pledge had been expressly given or not, it 
was charged as being understood, and was 
acted upon by the anti-renters — and was 
faithfully redeemed b}? the governor so 
elected, by his speedy pardon of the villain- 
ous criminals, for whom his aid had been thus 
sought to be purcliased. ' 

Fat- is it from my intention to stigmatize any 
of our population upon the ground of foreign 
birth. We should value men for their known 
merits, and not for their places of nativity. 
We ought to feel even the more indebted to a 
good citizen, or a public benefactor, if a for- 
eigner, who had sougiit our land and Govern- 
ment from preference, than if the mere accident 
of native birth had placed him in our country. 
Hence we are the more indebted for the ser- 
vices and talent and the patriotism of Mont- 
gomery, Chai'les Lee, Hamilton, Lafaj'ette, 
Kosciusko, Pulaski, and Gallatin, as foreigners, 
than if tliey had been among us by birth, in- 
stead of by preference. To hundreds of thou- 
sands of immigrants from Europe our country 
has been greatly indebted for tlieir useful pri- 
vate or public lives. But l^peak of classes, 
and not of individuals — of the general rule, 
and not of its exceptions. Taken altogether, 
the recent and present immigration from Eu- 
rope is lower ia intelligence than the lowest 
class of native citizens, and immeasurabl}' in- 
ferior in knowledge arid appreciation of the 
principles of free government. An infusion of 
such new population, amounting to a small 
minority only, could do no political harm. 
But the danger of prospective evil is enormous, 
wlien this new population can control entire 
States ; and, if not able to elect a President, 
is^o powerful as to be offered bribes for that 
purpose by every ambitious and unprincipled 
seeker of the office, who can so iiiHuence 
the legislation of the Congress of the United 
States. 

Tlie pretended philanthropists of the North- 
ern Stales are well aware of the effects which 
the success of their etforts for the abolition of 
Southern slavery would produce. The Wil- 
berforces andClarksons and Benezets of former 
times d ubtless were deceived, and believed 
all they professed as to tiie expected beneficial 
results of negro emancipation. But since the 
experiment of llayti, now of more than sixty 
years' standing, and of others of later date, in 
the British West Indies, and all tlie latter made 
with the utmost care, and under the most 
favorai)le auspices, no abolitionists of good 
sense and information can believe in the bene- 
fits of emancipation even to the slaves them- 
selves, or in the fitness of the negro race for 
freedom and self-government. Tlie present 
leaders in tiiis Nortljern warfare against South- 
ern slavery are actuated iiuicli less by love for 
the slaves than by hatred for iheii' masters. 
Their lust for political power is a still stronger 
operating motive than either. They know 
that the complete fruition of their macliina- 
tions would be to reduce the Southern States 
to the condition of Jamaica, if not to the still 
worse slate of Hayti. If they, or other as 



these Southern States, it will not only be the 
utter ruin of these States, but one of the 
heaviest blows to the well-being of the world, 
the most powerful obstacle to the settlement, 
culture, civilization, and highest improvement 
of all this western continent, and the exten- 
sion of free government and the true princi- 
ples of freedom among all the superior races 
capable of appreciating and preserving those 
blessings. And even the Northern States, all 
of which are now desirous, if not striving for 
the abolition of slavery in the South, would 
be, next to the Southern States, the greatest 
losers b}' that result, both in their pecuniary 
interests and political safety. 

If there is any existing institution of divine 
origin, and manifestly designed and used by 
the all-wise and all-good Creator to forward 
Ills beneficent purposes, slavery, and especially 
African domestic slavery, is such an institu- 
tion. Personal slavery- has existed from the 
earliest known existence of society. Slaves 
were held by the most virtuous and the most 
favored of God's ancient worshippers and ser- 
vants. Slavery' has ever been the means, if it 
is not the only possible means, of civilizing 
barbarous tribes and regions, siireading the 
culture of the earth, and instructi-ng the most 
ignorant and degraded races of men. Still 
better and peculiar features belong to African 
slavery, under civilized and white masters. 
By this, a race made inferior by nature, and 
always enslaved to barbarous and cruel mas- 
ters, was raised greatly in the scale of comfort 
and hap[)iness, as well as of improvement. 
Civilization and Christianity have thus been 
communicated to millions, who otherwise 
would never have heard of either. By aid of 
negro slavery only, could these Southern 
States, and still more the tropical regions of 
America, have been settled and cultivated by 
the white race. All that has been done in the 
South, atid much of all done even in the 
Xorthern States, for industrial and moral im- 
provement, letinement, and even religion, has 
been more or less duo to the existence of 
African slavery. For even all the older Morth- 
ern States had the benefit of this instil ution 
at first, when it was most needed, and retained 
it as long as it continued to be beneficial, and 
until the now fast growing slavery to want 
began to operate as a substitute. 

It is true that the institution of slavery is 
attended by many and great particular evils. 
And where is the great social institution which 
is not? Even in the blessed relations of hus- 
band and wife, and of parent and child, there 
are cases of great unhappiness and evil, and « 
crime, growing out of these very relations. 
Yet, because there are husbands and wives, 
and [>arenls and children, who are monsters 
in human shape, and who can avail themselves 
of these respective characters to perpelrate the 
most horrible crimes, and inflict the direst 
calamities on helpless and innocent sufferers, 
who would, therefore, condemn, and strive to 
abolish, the institution of marriage, or the sub- 
jection of children to parents? The legal in 



malignant and more powerful enemies, should stitution of apprenticeship, prevailing among 
€ver succeed in abolishing this institution in] every civilized and refined people^ is precisely 



slavery, only limited in the time of duration. 
In this generally beneficial relation of master 
and apprentice — and not less among the North- 
ern philanthropists than elsewhere — there oc- 
cur numerous cases of great injustice and 
cruelty, and of extreme and unmerited suffer- 
ing. Yet, who, among these even sincere wor- 
shippei-s of a sickly philanthropy, has proposed 
as the proper safeguard against such particular 
cases of oppression and crime, the abolition 
of the entire system of apprenticeship. 

Judging from the early existence and con- 
tinued duration of the institution of domestic 
Blavery — its almost universal extension — its 
beneficial influence in subduing barbarism and 
savage indolence and ignorance — in inducing 
the culture and improvement of the earth, and 
promotingtheindustry, civilization, refinement 
and general well-being of mankind — it seems 
to me an inevitable deduction, that the insti- 
tution of slavery is as surely and manifestly 
established by the wise and benevolent design 



of God, as the institution of marriage and of 
parental rule — and it is next to these, and in- 
ferior to these only, in producing important 
benefits to mankind. To the direct aid of do- 
mestic slavery, every cultivated portion of the 
earth, owes its first improvement, and every 
civilized people their first emerging from bar- 
barism. The only exceptions to the existence 
(past or present) and operation of this great 
element of improvement, are to be found among 
the most rude and ignorant of savage tribes, 
such as the aboriginal inhabitants of North 
America and Australia. And if it had ever 
been, since the creation of man, that all man- 
kind had been sunk in that lowest depth of 
barbarism, they would have so continued to 
this day, if without the aid of the institution 
of domestic slavery, for their improvement, or 
otherwise, the still more direct exercise of the 
miraculous, as well as benevolent power of 
Almighty God. 



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